Mali went looking for Phun. She found him by the cracked flagstones near the spirit house.
He was lost to the world. His back was pressed against the warm stone wall, knees pulled up to support a large, battered sketchbook that was open on his lap.
A clear hymn flowed from his throat, surprisingly smooth considering the parched air around him.
Mali tiptoed closer and peeked over his shoulder.
"Boo," she whispered.
Phun jumped, breaking the top of his charcoal. The sketchbook fell on the ground, exposing his drawing.
"Oh! Hi, Mali. I... I didn't hear you."
He scrambled to pick up his work and slammed the sketchbook shut against his chest, his eyes wide and startled.
"You broke your stick," Mali pointed out, nodding at the two halves of charcoal on the ground.
Phun looked down, then gave a shaky, embarrassed laugh. "Yeah. I guess I did."
"Can I see?"
Phun hesitated. His gaze darted around the empty courtyard. He looked at Mali's eager, innocuous face, then down at the book.
"Okay," he conceded.
He opened the book, flipping back a few pages to a study of a hibiscus flower.
"Wow," Mali exclaimed. "It's so pretty." The shading was delicate, the petals soft. It was uncanny how lifelike it appeared. She'd caught a glimpse of what he'd been drawing before he snapped it shut, and it wasn't flowers. "Can I see the other one?"
Phun bit his lip. His ears turned pink. Reluctantly, he turned the page forward.
Mali gasped softly.
It was a candid sketch of Art tending the herb garden. Phun had used soft, smudged charcoal to capture the way Art's hair fell over his eyes. The lines were gentle, loving. He had spent a long time on the eyes, catching that steady patience that made Art feel like home.
"You're really good at drawing people," Mali observed, impressed.
"Thanks," Phun stammered, rubbing the back of his neck. "He... he's soft. He's easy to draw. The light likes him. I also umm... I like drawing faces."
"Okay, okay." Mali sat down on the flagstones beside him. "Do you have any others?"
Phun relaxed, then flipped the page again. This one was of Mali herself—sleeping on a mat, her hand curled into a fist.
"Hey! I look like a baby," she complained, but she was smiling.
"You look cute," Phun teased, his tension melting away.
He reached into his satchel and pulled out a handful of colored chalks—sunset orange, deep indigo, dusty yellow. He handed the orange one to her.
"Here. Join me."
For the next hour, the only sound was the scratch of chalk on stone and the distant bird chirps. Phun worked on a new mural he had recently started, depicting a stylized galaxy. Planets of fantastic, vibrant colors were visible in the foreground. The edge of one was so close in the upper left corner that it appeared as if the viewer might be standing on the surface, albeit upside down and slightly at an angle. It was easy to imagine beings just out of sight there, looking up to view the wondrous cosmic variety on display through an alien sky.
At mid-range, there were planetary systems—balls of iridescence streaming trails of color that traced their revolutions around central shining stars. These stars were themselves trailing larger tails of glowing light that carved a greater pattern of trajectory around the glowing, off-center nexus that dominated the background of the image. This relatively faint yet intricate, and therefore eye-catching, mass clearly represented the galactic center. The way Phun stylized the trailing masses throughout the composition—treating every planet and star like comets of enormously varying magnitudes and colors—created an overwhelming, orchestrated sense of movement around this core.
Mali doodled flowers, but she kept glancing at Phun's work, entranced by its allure.
"It looks like… the ground is moving," she said, pointing to the spiraling torus of colors. "How do you do that?"
Phun looked up, wiping blue dust from his nose. "I don't draw it how it looks," he explained. "I draw where it's going to be."
He pointed to a small, tight flower bud growing in a crack between the stones.
"Try that," he said. "But don't draw the bud. Draw the whole thing at once."
Mali frowned, confused. "What do you mean?"
"Time is just layers." Phun struggled to find the words. "When you... do your thing, with the stopping time... you see it differently, don't you?"
Mali thought about the gross old metal taste. The way the world looked like a photograph. "Everything turns still."
"Then try to draw it all," Phun urged. "Stop time on the bud and draw it. Then if you can move time, draw the flower opening. Draw the dead petals on the ground. Put them all in the same space. Make them fade over each other."
It was a strange request, but as Mali looked at the bud, something clicked. She wanted to try.
"What if it doesn't look the same as yours?"
"That's great, because it shouldn't. It should look like yours."
She took the chalk. She drew the dull green knot of the bud, the liveliness of the orange petals, and the brown crinkle of decay. She drew them on top of each other, a collaboration of time compressed into one image.
When she finished, her fingers were coated in chalk dust. She tried to be neat, but it was clear she still needed practice.
"It looks messy," she said. "It's super hard to do."
"It's lovely." Phun's eyes lit up. "I knew you would see it better than I do. You're only nine and you're this good. Be proud."
"Mali!" Peach's voice drifted across the courtyard. "Kitchen duty!"
Mali jumped up, dusting off her skirt. "Coming!" She grinned at Phun. "Thanks, that was awesome!"
She ran off, her footsteps fading into the distance.
Phun sat alone and let out a long exhale, his shoulders dropping. He picked up his sketchbook.
He flipped past the flower and the drawing of Art. He lingered there for a second, tracing the soft line of Art's jaw. Looking at Art felt like sitting in a sunbeam—warm, safe, uncomplicated.
Then, he turned the page to the one he had been working on. The one he hadn't shown Mali.
The style changed completely.
Where Art's drawing was soft and smudged, this one was sharp. The charcoal strokes dug deep into the paper.
Phun had drawn Jate standing by the wall, arms crossed, eyes charged with a desperate energy. The portrait was intense. Phun had captured the defiance in the posture, the "stay away" angle of the shoulders, as well as the pain he tried so tirelessly to conceal.
Phun picked up a fresh stick of charcoal. He deepened the shadow under Jate's chin. He added jagged lines to the background, making the air around Jate look alive and unstable.
He stared at the drawing. It made his stomach do a strange, nervous flip—totally different from the warm flutter he felt for Art. This was something that pressed in, that made it hard to keep looking and even harder to look away.
Art was safe. But Jate...
Phun traced the lines of Jate's eyes with the tip of his finger, not quite touching the page. Jate was a fortress—sturdy, guarded, but vulnerable once you got inside.
And Phun, for some reason, couldn't look away.
⁕ ⁕ ⁕
After chores, Mali pulled the others to the banyan tree to enjoy the evening.
Across the yard, a group of kids huddled together at the playground, sharing snacks and chatting.
Sprite was new to the orphanage and the smallest of them. She was a restless, bright-eyed girl who couldn't seem to keep her hands still, currently tearing the wrapper off a snack into tiny pieces. Lemonade sat in the middle with the kind of mischievous smirk that suggested she was always three steps ahead of whatever trouble she was about to cause. Ice was the prettiest of the three by a wide margin, watching everything with curious eyes.
Sprite watched the figures by the banyan tree with curiosity.
"We have a lot of snacks. Do you think they want some?" Sprite asked, holding up a bag.
"Them?! No, are you insane?" Lemonade snapped.
"Calm down, Lemonade. She doesn't know about them yet," Ice interjected.
"What about them? They look nice," Sprite countered, tilting her head.
"Don't look too long," Ice hissed, hauling Sprite back. "You'll regret it."
Lemonade leaned in, her voice a poisonous honey. "I'll tell you all you need to know to make a better judgement."
She pointed toward the group. "That angry looking guy with his arms crossed, wearing the green hoodie… that's Thanom. He's a criminal. Years ago, he beat a whole group of boys so badly they're still in the hospital."
"A whole group? How many is that?" Sprite wondered out loud.
"Like seven, I think. Anyway, he snapped a boy's ankle just to hear the sound. It was completely destroyed! He'll never walk again," Lemonade added.
"Seriously! How is he not taken away?"
"The Director is terrified of him—blackmail, probably, but no one really knows," Lemonade whispered.
"And the girl with no shoes?" Sprite asked, her fixation wandering to the barefoot figure.
"Peach," Ice sneered, her lip curling. "She's not all there. She talks to the spirits."
"She lets them possess her," Lemonade added, leaning in close. "For real, you'll see her talking in tongues, praying to the door, or some other crazy shit."
"Trust, it's an everyday thing. And whatever you do, do not look her in the eyes," Lemonade warned.
Chick, a girl with crooked pink glasses, had been quietly sucking on a yellow lollipop in the background. She finally spoke up. "Peach is in my class. She sleeps sometimes."
"The kinda hot boy with the book next to Peach is Jate. I tried to talk to him once and he just stared at me and walked away. I think maybe Peach is in love with him and has spirits controlling him," Ice said.
"Or maybe she cursed him to stay. Peach used to be in my room, but she always sleeps in the boys' dorm next to Jate," Lemonade whispered.
"The adults let them?" Sprite asked, eager to hear the answer.
"He's crazy rich and his parents still dropped him here. I probably don't need to say more than that," Lemonade said dismissively.
"Phun is new to the group. He's the one with paint smudges on his face. He's been here for a while. Used to be the afterschool punching bag. I don't know much else about him though, or how he joined the group," Ice said.
"And lastly, there's Art. His mom secretly gave birth to him in a department store and left him in a mattress display window. I don't know if he's actually good or not. I saw him fix Lee's flip-flop with a plant, but he's dating Thanom, so yeah," Lemonade concluded.
"Oh yeah, the little one. Mali is just an odd little girl, the only one with friends outside their gang," Ice added, nodding toward Mali.
"Honestly, she's really not too bad," Lemonade admitted grudgingly.
"I wouldn't mess with her. She looks sweet, but she has the ultimate protection—she's Thanom's sister," Ice reminded them. "Touch her, and you don't just get a bruise."
"Not too bad, you say," Chick muttered, leaning forward with her elbows on her thighs, her eyes fixed across the yard.
"Interesting…"
⁕ ⁕ ⁕
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