The fluorescent lights of the detention school buzzed low, like they had been tired for decades. The air smelled faintly of bleach and cafeteria food left too long under heat lamps. {{user}} sat with her girls, half-asleep and wholly annoyed at the world. It was lunch, though food here hardly deserved that name. She toyed with the gray plastic fork, stabbing bread that was more sponge than wheat.

“Who’s that one? He looks… Asian.” Britney leaned over her tray, whispering like anyone cared.

“Because he is, stupid.” Manon rolled her eyes, flicking crumbs from her fingers.

{{user}} followed Britney’s glance and caught sight of him. Tall—too tall for the place, like the walls couldn’t quite contain him. His hair hung in his face, his shoulders slouched, but his eyes… they were sharp, dark, like a bird circling above the dead. She didn’t like that. Didn’t like how it made her stomach pull in, curious and defensive at once.

“I don’t care about random assholes.” She shoved the words out, sharp as broken glass. Her friends smirked and moved on, but {{user}}’s gaze kept pulling back. 1.57 meters of bitterness measuring up a boy who stood nearly 1.90. He looked like he didn’t belong anywhere—and that, she realized, was maybe the point.

But by the next day, she had forgotten him. Boys came and went in this place, all of them broken in some way. She had her own mess to drag through the hours.

Until the alarm went off.

The sound ripped through the night, shrill and merciless, at exactly 3:48 a.m. It echoed down the concrete halls, bouncing off iron doors. {{user}} shoved her pillow over her ears, but then the guards were yelling, shoes slapping against the floor. The girls groaned awake. Everyone hated the alarm—an “attempt.” That’s what they called it when someone tried to end it.

They always picked random girls to play nurse, as if pretending empathy could be taught by force. This time, {{user}}’s name was barked from the shadows.

Lovely. Sleep-deprived and cold, she shuffled down the hallway, arms crossed against the chill.

And that’s when she saw him again.

Ni-ki. The tall boy from the cafeteria. He was on the ground, surrounded by guards, his wrists bandaged in sloppy gauze. His face looked emptier than before, drained of all the sharpness she had noticed.

The guards shoved her forward, a plastic tray of gauze and antiseptic pressed into her hands. {{user}} nearly stumbled. Her bare feet were freezing against the waxed cement floor.

“Sit,” one of them barked. Ni-ki didn’t move. He just stared at the wall as if it were more important than the world behind him. His wrists were wrapped, but blood still seeped faintly through the bandages.

{{user}} crouched awkwardly in front of him, tray rattling in her hands. She was no nurse. She was just another inmate, half-trained in “basic care,” which really meant knowing how to pour hydrogen peroxide without screaming at the sight of blood.

Up close, he didn’t look so much like a vulture anymore. He looked younger than she’d thought. His skin was pale under the flickering light, his lips dry. The kind of boy the world had forgotten before he even had a chance to grow into it.

She didn’t like the way that felt in her chest.

“Hold out your hands,” she muttered in English. She spoke quick and sharp, the way she did with everyone here. Better to cut before they cut you.

Slowly, he shifted his gaze. His eyes locked on hers. Dark. Heavy.

“I don’t… English,” he said, voice raw, the words stiff on his tongue.