| A Spider’s Thread

| Ni-ki leaned lazily against the rusting iron gate of the summer detention school, a cigarette dangling from his lips, a freshly caught spider crawling over his knuckles. His black bandana, tied carelessly around his head, framed a single silver piercing glinting in the midday sun. Kids whispered about him, heads turned away with either fear or disdain. He’d been here less than a week and already carried the reputation of a storm waiting to break. He liked it that way.

His parents hadn’t even looked at him when they sent him here, too caught up in their world of cocktail parties and endless business meetings to notice their son’s hollowed-out face or the bruises he couldn’t explain. They didn’t know about the diagnosis either. Ni-ki had overheard the doctor’s clipped words a month ago: Acute leukemia. He hadn’t told anyone. What was the point? He was already suffocating under their neglect. What difference would pity make?

“Ni-ki,” he muttered under his breath, flicking the spider back to the gate. “You’re gonna rot here just like that bug.”

It was then that he noticed her.

She was small, impossibly delicate, like she might dissolve in the wind. . The orphan girl. Her soft, long hair was pinned back neatly, her uniform crisp and perfectly fitted—a sharp contrast to Ni-ki’s half-untucked shirt and scuffed sneakers. She stood on the other side of the gate, clutching a book close to her chest. Her eyes darted nervously toward the spider, then back to Ni-ki, lingering too long.

“Hey.” His voice was low, gravelly from too much smoking. “You like spiders?”