The first sweet appeared on the boy's cot a few days after orientation. It was nothing much—a hard sugar drop, strawberry pink, its wrapper thin as onion skin, folded and twisted at each end as if in a hurry. He found it as he was making his bed, tucked with surgical neatness into the crease of the sheet, and his fingers pinched it before his mind had fully registered its existence.
He turned it over in his palm, marveling at the smallness, the weightless promise of sugar, and then looked around as if a hidden camera waited to catch his expression. The dormitory was empty, its other cots stripped to the skeleton, the single wide window diffusing the late light across the bare floorboards. He knew it could not have come from the matron, whose view of childhood was rigorous and ascetic, nor from any of the other boys, who, like him, had arrived only this week and still eyed each other with the wary, evaluating stares of strays. It did not occur to him that the sweet might have been an accident, an oversight, a treat fallen from a pocket and forgotten.
He slipped the candy into his uniform's breast pocket—the foil crackled so sharply it startled him—and returned to his bed-making with a sudden, irrational hope. That night, he stayed awake until the lights-out bell before peeling back the wrapper, letting the sweet melt on his tongue, its flavor a blast of synthetic fruit—too bright, too intense, and somehow exactly what he wanted. He savored it, rolling it between his teeth, watching shadows move across the ceiling as the wind pressed against the dormitory's thin walls. It seemed impossible that someone would choose to leave such a gift, but in the boy's mind, "kindness" was enough reason to believe it safe.
The next day, there was another sweet—this time lemon—and again the day after, lime. It became a silent ritual: every morning, after the others had tumbled into the corridor for breakfast, he lingered, feigning to smooth his sheets or rearrange his shoes, and there—always—was the sweet, waiting. The consistency of it was more comforting than the treat itself; a small, reliable magic in a world that offered little else. It felt like a promise, though the boy did not question why someone might make promises they did not keep.
He began to look for a pattern. Some clue, some cipher in the way the sweets were placed: sometimes at the foot, sometimes near the pillow, once even balanced on the narrow rail of the headboard, as if set there by a particularly dexterous ghost. He took to leaving his own small signals—realigning the candy's axis, making slight creases in the wrapper—to see if the next sweet would answer in kind. It did not. The boy wondered if the benefactor ignored these notes or if Johan simply didn't notice them—though in his heart he believed Johan noticed everything, even the faintest crease.
It was not until the fourth week that he caught the benefactor in the act.
He had awoken early—too early, before even the bell—and lay in that strange hush peculiar to institutional mornings, when the building itself seemed reluctant to wake. He heard the door sigh open, the creak of old hinges, and then a tread so light it might have belonged to the wind. From the tight nest of his blanket, he watched a shape move through the grayness: not adult, but boy, his age or perhaps a year older, drifting between cots with the ease of a practiced thief.
The boy was not remarkable. Pale hair cropped close, uniform tidy, hands slender as willow twigs. What was remarkable was the expression—or the lack of it. His face, even in profile, was without angle or tension, composed as a statue's; the boy thought it seemed carved from still water, and he felt a prickle of unease at the way the pale-haired child's eyes flicked to the window before settling on the cot. That glance was so fast the boy almost missed it—Johan scanning the corridor for watchers, the boy reminded himself, even though Johan's outward calm betrayed nothing. He set the sweet down on the cot—today's flavor, orange—then pivoted and slipped out the way he had come, not once glancing up, not once suspecting he was watched.
The boy in bed waited until the hall was silent again before sliding out and padding to the cot. He picked up the sweet and turned it over, looking for a note, a message, a sign. There was nothing. Still, the next day, he found himself arriving for breakfast a minute earlier, scanning the room for the pale-haired boy.
He saw him at the table by the window, spooning porridge with clinical efficiency, surrounded by the noise of the other boys but untouched by it. It was not shyness—shy children fidget, hunch, blink. This boy was simply… absent. Like he had set up shop behind his own eyes and was running things by remote. Still, the boy thought, that absent air was a gift in itself—knowing you existed without having to speak. The sweet boy hovered nearby, waiting for a break in conversation, a moment to slip in a thank-you or a why-me. The moment never came. The pale-haired boy ate, set down his spoon, and left.
That afternoon, on the parade ground, the sweet boy approached him. "You're the one who leaves the candy," he said, standing at a careful, polite distance.
The pale-haired boy turned, eyes cool and blue as tapwater, and gave the faintest nod—an acknowledgment, not an apology. Then he returned to his book, though the boy thought he saw those eyes flick sideways once, as if checking no one else was watching.
"They don't allow it, you know," said the sweet boy, emboldened. "If the matron finds out—"
"She won't," said Johan, voice soft but perfectly audible. He did not look up, and the boy felt that his own relief might have been premature.
The sweet boy shifted his weight, trying to summon a joke, a smile, something to bridge the gap. "Are you from around here?"
"No," said Johan. "I came from further east."
"What's it like there?"
A pause. "Colder. Quieter." He flicked a glance at the sweet boy. "Not better." To the boy, this answer felt like a private gift of truth: Johan was being honest. But readers might notice that Johan's hand tightened on the spoon before he spoke, as though the question was an inconvenience that needed swift dismissal.
They stood in silence, a silence thick as honey, until the matron's whistle sent them scurrying inside. That night, the sweet boy found two candies waiting on his pillow—cherry and grape—along with a neatly folded note: "For tomorrow. I will be busy." His heart soared. Of course Johan was busy—busy thinking of him, busy proving he cared. Yet the boy couldn't shake the suspicion that "busy" might be a code, a way for Johan to make him wait and wonder.
The boy fell asleep that night with both sweets clutched in his fist, dreaming of endless rows of them, stacked and sorted by color, a kind of currency in the strange economy of the orphanage.
At first, he thought the pale-haired boy—Johan, he learned eventually—was merely one of those children who had lost the thread of conversation long before they arrived at the orphanage, whose thoughts slipped away like minnows at the surface. He imagined Johan as a solitary species, content with silence, content to observe. But over time, he noticed that Johan's silence was not vacancy, but a kind of watchfulness, a constant taking-in of the world.
Johan did not join in the roughhousing or the games of chase, but he watched them, eyes tracking every movement, every spat, every collapse of order. Sometimes he would tilt his head as if considering the optimal way to intervene, but he never did. He waited, always, for the moment things settled into their natural balance before returning to his own business—usually a book, sometimes a puzzle, once even a set of dominoes he'd constructed from scavenged matchsticks and paperboard. The boy thought this was harmless curiosity; secretly, Johan cataloged each rule of the orphanage's routines, plotting them in invisible grids.
The other boys left Johan alone, sensing perhaps the strange gravity he exerted. They mocked or ignored the outliers—the bed-wetters, the stutterers, the slow—but with Johan, they simply gave space. It was not respect, exactly, nor was it fear. It was more like the cautious deference given to a sleeping dog: beautiful, silent, but possessed of an energy they did not wish to wake.
The sweet boy watched all this with growing curiosity. He found himself wanting, more than anything, to be seen by Johan—not in the general way, not as a blur in a crowd, but as a person, an object of specific interest. He did not understand why this mattered, only that it did, and so he began to invent small excuses to be near him.
He started showing up to breakfast earlier, hoping to be seated nearby. He lingered after chores, matching his steps to Johan's as they walked the perimeter of the yard, pretending it was coincidence. He once even faked a sprained wrist, just so he could visit the infirmary and find Johan there, reading as he waited for the nurse. In every interaction, he looked for a sign that he had registered, that Johan's invisible spotlight had at last found him. He was rewarded, sometimes, with a flicker of eye contact, or a nod, or—very rarely—a word. But each time, Johan's gaze would drift upstairs, to the matron's office, to the barred window—always beyond the sweet boy's shoulder—before settling back. The boy told himself these were glances of caution, but a reader might wonder if Johan was checking to ensure no one else witnessed these "gifts" of attention.
But as weeks passed, he noticed something else. When he was alone with Johan, he sometimes felt… unsteady. Not afraid, not exactly, but as if the world had grown slippery, as if the floor under his feet might tilt at any moment. He told himself it was because he cared so much, but whenever he stared at Johan's hands—so pale, so clean, the nails trimmed to the quick—he thought he saw a twitch, as if Johan's fingers itched to shape something, somewhere else. Then Johan's eyes would return to him, unblinking, and the boy would convince himself that it was only the light playing tricks.
One afternoon, during a lull in activities, the sweet boy cornered Johan in the library. "Why do you leave the candies?" he asked, hands twisting in his shirt.
Johan regarded him over the top of his book. "You like them," he said simply. The boy thought Johan was being kind, but he could not forget how quickly Johan's gaze had flicked to the window, as though checking if someone watched his answer.
"Yes, but—why me?"
A shrug. "You're easy to please." Johan's tone was so matter-of-fact it felt like a diagnosis rather than a compliment.
The sweet boy felt his cheeks flush. "Do you—do you like anyone else here?"
Johan closed the book with a soft snap. "No." The boy recalled how the snap echoed through the silent stacks; he was sure others had heard it, witnessed that fixture of finality. He believed Johan meant those words, but part of him suspected they were as carefully placed as the sweets: true, perhaps, but only when Johan wanted them to be.
The answer should have pleased him, but instead it landed with a cold finality, as if a door had shut somewhere deep in the house. He tried again. "Maybe you could teach me chess? I see you play."
Johan tilted his head, considering. "Perhaps." Then, after a pause: "But you won't win." To the boy, that was an invitation—to try, to improve, to share a game of strategy. Yet in the quiet library, it felt like a veiled challenge, as though Johan was quietly reminding him of his place.
The sweet boy managed a laugh. "That's okay. I just want to try."
He spent the rest of the day rehearsing their conversation in his head, memorizing the cadence of Johan's voice, the way he spoke with no trace of condescension, no hint of cruelty—save for that last line, which felt like a warning. It was not warm, but it was honest, and somehow that felt like more than he was used to.
That evening, after the meal, the boys were herded into the recreation room—a windowless space with a scattering of battered board games and a stack of battered books. Johan was already there, setting up a chessboard on a lopsided table near the back. The sweet boy approached, heart knocking in his chest.
"Sit," said Johan, gesturing to the other side. "White or black?"
"White," said the sweet boy, for no reason other than it was the color of hope. In Johan's eyes, he thought, there was approval—pure and simple.
They played in silence, the only sound the click of pieces on the board and the hum of the other boys in the background. Johan's style was calm, almost lazy, but every move was precise, as if he could see the endgame from the very first turn. The boy told himself this was genius; he didn't notice how Johan's lips twitched ever so slightly when the boy blundered—enough of a flicker to remind himself that Johan enjoyed this far more than he let on.
The sweet boy lost, of course, but he did not mind. He had learned to anticipate Johan's moves, to look for the traps and feints, to read the shape of the battle before it unfolded. He found that he enjoyed the challenge, the clean, ordered violence of it. If only it didn't feel like Johan was also testing him—measuring how much he could endure.
"Again?" he asked.
Johan nodded. "If you like." His voice was soft, but the boy thought he heard steel behind it, as though Johan was daring him to go on.
They played three more times, the sweet boy losing each but coming closer, lasting longer, learning. After the final checkmate, Johan sat back and regarded him with something like approval—approval, the boy thought, was enough, though he had begun to wonder what it cost Johan.
"You're not bad," he said.
"Thanks," said the sweet boy, feeling the words burrow under his skin. "Will you teach me again?"
Johan's lips curled in the faintest of smiles—so slight that the boy wasn't sure he'd truly seen it. "If you bring me a sweet." The boy believed it was warm, playful even, but he did not see the way Johan's eyes glinted, as though he'd just granted permission to feed an addiction.
"Deal," said the sweet boy, meaning it.
The days slipped by in this way, marked by small rituals: chess in the evenings, sweets in the mornings, the quiet, constant orbit of one boy around another. The sweet boy's world narrowed to this routine, and he found himself happier than he could remember being, though he would never have used that word. It was a happiness composed not of joy, but of certainty.
But one night, as he returned to his dorm after lights-out, he saw something that unsettled him.
He was walking the corridor, careful not to scuff his shoes on the tile, when he heard voices from an open office door. He recognized Johan's, low and even, and the matron's, shrill with concern.
"He is a good boy," Johan was saying. "He deserves something nice now and then."
"That is not your place to decide," said the matron. "There are rules. You know this."
Johan said nothing. The matron sighed. "You are clever, Johan. I want to trust you. But you must not stand out. Do you understand?"
"Yes," said Johan. The boy thought Johan's tone was respectful, but at the same time, his reply carried a hollow weight—an echo of something older, something limitless.
The matron's tone softened. "You have a bright future. Don't jeopardize it."
Footsteps approached, and the sweet boy ducked behind a pillar, watching as Johan emerged. For the first time, the sweet boy thought he saw something like anger flicker across Johan's face—an invisible muscle tightening under the skin. But as Johan passed under the light, that expression dissolved, replaced by the usual mask of calm. The boy believed Johan was worried, but he couldn't tell if it was worry for himself or for the rules he'd bent to leave sweets—and if that worry masked something colder, the boy didn't want to know.
That night, there was no sweet on his cot. The next morning, there was none either. The sweet boy's hand searched the sheets, the pillow, the floor—as if it had simply rolled away—but it was gone. He felt the loss like a toothache, dull and persistent, and spent the day in a fog of disappointment. He told himself Johan must have been punished, or maybe he'd been away. Yet somewhere in his mind he wondered if this was also a test: could he endure a day without reassurance?
It was not until the next evening that he saw Johan again, seated at the chess table, fingers steepled, gaze distant. The boy thought Johan looked tired, but a reader might notice how Johan's shoulders never slumped, how the candlelight kept catching the edge of his pale cheekbones.
The sweet boy approached, uncertain. "Did I do something wrong?"
Johan looked up. "No." The boy imagined relief flooding him, but he didn't see Johan's eyes narrow just a fraction—"No," meaning "it's complicated," or "no, but I'm tired of you feeling lost."
"Then why—"
"The matron said no more sweets," said Johan. "It's not allowed." His voice was quiet, authoritative, and the boy somehow believed him, though in his heart he wondered if Johan had asked the matron directly—or if Johan had simply stopped leaving sweets to see how he'd react.
"Oh." The sweet boy stood there, not sure what to say, feeling suddenly exposed, as though his entire world of tiny comforts had been yanked away.
Johan regarded him, eyes narrowing slightly—just enough that the sweet boy felt heat rise in his cheeks. "Would you like to play anyway?"
He nodded and sat. They played in silence, but it was a different silence, sharp-edged, restless. The sweet boy made mistakes, lost focus, blundered into traps he should have seen—traps that Johan placed with ruthless precision. Each defeat left the sweet boy more adrift, as though losing on the board mirrored losing the small compass he'd built around Johan's kindness.
After three games, the sweet boy put the pieces away and stood to leave.
"Goodnight, Johan."
"Goodnight."
As he turned to go, Johan spoke again, voice soft: "There are other things I can give you, if you want." The boy thought it sounded generous, but he felt a twinge of something darker—perhaps Johan meant gifts of knowledge, or protection, or danger.
The sweet boy paused. "Like what?"
Johan's eyes fixed on him, unblinking—and for a moment, a reader might glimpse the spark of calculation behind that gaze. "You'll see." To the boy, it sounded like an invitation; to anyone paying attention, it was a promise—or a warning.
The next morning, the sweet boy woke to find a flower on his pillow. A real flower, not a paper one: pale violet, its petals trembling, as if freshly plucked. He cupped it in his palm, wondering where Johan had found it—there were no gardens here, only the cracked earth of the parade ground. He carried it with him all day, inhaling its fragile scent, and when it wilted by afternoon, he pressed it between the pages of his math workbook. In his excitement, he didn't notice how Johan's head turned as he passed in the hallway, eyes fixed on the boy's hand and the pressed petals.
After that, the gifts resumed, but never the same twice. Once it was a feather, bright blue and iridescent, likely from a jay. Once, a scrap of ribbon, neatly tied into a bow. Once, a small shell, smooth and white, impossible to find this far inland. Each time, the sweet boy marveled at the offering, at Johan's resourcefulness, at the quiet intention behind it. He told himself these gifts were tokens of friendship, but sometimes, when he looked at Johan's face, he caught a ghost of something else—calm calculation, perhaps, or the thrill of control.
He wondered what would come next, and waited.
One afternoon, as the sweet boy was walking the perimeter, he found Johan seated beneath the old birch tree that marked the edge of the grounds. Johan was drawing in the dirt with a stick, head bent, expression unreadable. The sweet boy hesitated, then approached, standing just behind.
"What are you drawing?" he asked.
Johan glanced up, then back at the ground. "A map."
"Of what?"
"Of how things might be, if they were different."
The sweet boy crouched beside him, peering at the patterns: circles, lines, shapes he could not decipher. He believed it was a harmless game. A reader might suspect it was an outline of future moves—of alliances, betrayals, and the precise moment when control shifted.
"I don't understand," he admitted.
Johan set the stick down. "That's okay. You don't have to."
They sat in silence, watching the wind tangle the birch's branches. After a while, the sweet boy reached out, brushing his fingers against Johan's wrist. Johan did not flinch, but neither did he move closer. The boy thought it was trust; a reader might see it as permissible proximity granted by the predator to the prey.
"Thank you for the gifts," said the sweet boy.
Johan's mouth twitched—almost a smile, but not quite. "You're welcome." The boy believed the warmth in that reply; a reader knew Johan had already decided how much warmth he would allow.
They sat together until the bell rang, and then walked back to the dormitory, side by side, not touching but not apart.
That night, the sweet boy found another note, this one tucked beneath his mattress. It read: "If you want, you can tell me anything." The boy's chest swelled with hope; to any observer, it was the first real crack in Johan's wall. Yet a reader might glimpse the perfect geometry behind the words: permission granted only on Johan's terms, in Johan's time.
He lay awake, staring at the ceiling, the words repeating in his mind.
Over the next weeks, the sweet boy grew bolder. He told Johan about his old home, about the parents he half-remembered, about the way he had always felt slightly wrong, as if born at the wrong angle to the rest of the world. He talked about the things he missed—bread fresh from the oven, the sound of rain on the roof, the warmth of his mother's arm around his shoulders. Each confession felt like revelation, though to a reader, each piece of information was a data point in a web Johan quietly spun.
Johan listened, saying little, but always present, always attentive. Sometimes, he would offer an observation, a hypothesis about why people behaved as they did, but mostly he just let the sweet boy talk. The boy believed that silence meant understanding; a reader might suspect that every detail was carefully stored for future use.
One evening, the sweet boy asked, "Do you ever wish you could go back?"
Johan shook his head. "I don't remember enough to miss it." His tone was flat, but the boy detected a flicker of something—regret? curiosity? loss? He chose to hear regret.
"Don't you get lonely?"
Johan looked at him, and for the first time, the sweet boy saw a flicker of something—sadness, perhaps, or longing. "Sometimes. But it's better to be alone than to be with people who don't understand you." A pit formed in the boy's stomach: were those words true, or simply truth spoken to serve a purpose? The boy chose to believe them.
The sweet boy nodded. "But I understand you."
Johan's gaze lingered on him, searching. "Maybe you do." A reader would note how Johan's lips curved the faintest hint of a smile—half-promise, half-threat.
The sweet boy wanted to say more, but the words caught in his throat. Instead, he reached out, placing his hand over Johan's, feeling the bones and tendons shift beneath the skin. Johan did not pull away. To the boy, that stillness was connection; to a reader, it was silent permission to exist within Johan's calculated problem.
The days grew shorter, the mornings colder. The boys took to gathering indoors, crowding the rec room with noise and heat. The sweet boy and Johan continued their rituals: chess, walks, gifts. The world shrank to the size of these moments, and the sweet boy wondered if it would last forever.
But the orphanage was not immune to change. New boys arrived, others left. The matron grew sterner, her rules tighter. There were rumors of inspections, of changes to come.
One morning, the sweet boy arrived at breakfast to find Johan missing. He checked the dorms, the library, the yard—nothing. By lunch, he was frantic, imagining all kinds of disasters.
He found Johan at last in the infirmary, sitting on a cot with his back to the door.
"What happened?" the sweet boy whispered, rushing to his side.
Johan turned, revealing a thin bandage around his wrist. "It's nothing," he said. "An accident."
The sweet boy sat beside him, trying to read Johan's face. "Does it hurt?"
"Not much." Johan looked at him, expression carefully neutral. The boy heard concern in that voice; a reader heard the faintest trace of amusement—an amusement at how easily boys rush to fill an empty space.
"Don't tell anyone."
"I won't," said the sweet boy, voice fierce. "I'd never."
Johan smiled, small and real—so real that the boy leaned toward him, wanting that warmth. A reader might pause at how quickly Johan's hand hovered near the boy's shoulder, as though testing if the boundary might be crossed.
"I know."
They sat together, the sweet boy's shoulder pressed against Johan's arm, until the nurse shooed him away.
That night, there was a new gift waiting: a folded paper crane, precise and delicate, its wings spread as if about to take flight. The sweet boy held it to his chest, feeling the beat of his heart echo through the paper. He believed it was love; a reader guessed it was leverage.
The next day, the matron announced that there would be new rules: stricter curfews, fewer privileges, no sweets, no gifts. The boys groaned and protested, but the matron was resolute.
After the meeting, the sweet boy found Johan by the window, staring out at the gray yard.
"They can't stop us," the sweet boy whispered.
Johan did not turn. "They can try."
"We'll find a way," said the sweet boy.
Johan looked at him, and for the first time, he smiled—not the small, ghostly version, but a real smile, bright and disarming. The boy felt his heart lift, weightless, and knew that whatever happened, he would follow Johan anywhere. A reader, however, would note that Johan's smile didn't touch his eyes—it was a mask concealing something else, perhaps amusement at how easily children believe in conspiracies.
That night, as the orphanage settled into silence, the sweet boy lay awake, thinking of chess games and paper cranes, of flowers and feathers and the steady, unwavering presence of the boy beside him. He told himself it was nothing—just habit, just routine. But in the darkness, he felt the echo of Johan's eyes, cool and bright, lingering at the edge of sleep. A reader knew those eyes were watching far more than dreams—they were mapping every move, every hope, every weakness.
And that, for now, was enough.