world.
The world did not announce itself all at once.
It arrived quietly, in fragments—small enough to ignore, heavy enough to change how one walked. Jayson began to feel it in the way people spoke less and listened more, in how doors closed earlier at night, in how his mother's hands lingered on his shoulders just a second longer before letting go.
He was still a child, but childhood was thinning.
One afternoon, as he walked home alone, he stopped at the edge of the road where the dirt met stone. Beyond it lay places he had never been—streets that did not end in familiar houses, paths that curved away instead of circling back. For the first time, he wondered what existed past the boundaries of what he knew.
Not with excitement.
With caution.
A man stood nearby, leaning against a post, his face unreadable. Jayson felt the man's eyes on him—not unkind, not cruel, but measuring. As if the man was trying to decide what kind of future could grow from a boy like him.
Jayson lowered his gaze and kept walking.
That night, rain fell hard against the roof, each drop striking like a question with no answer. He sat beside his mother as she mended a tear in his shirt. The needle moved with practiced precision, in and out, in and out, as though repetition could keep uncertainty at bay.
"Why do people argue so much now?" Jayson asked.
His mother paused.
"Because they want different things," she said.
"What kind of things?"
She tied the thread, neat and final. "Things that don't always fit together."
Jayson thought about that as he lay in bed, listening to the rain. He imagined the world as something vast and uneven, full of pieces that didn't quite match. Some people tried to force them together. Others got crushed between them.
Sleep came slowly.
When it did, he dreamed not of games or running fields, but of standing in a wide open space, unsure which direction to take. Every path led somewhere unfamiliar. Every choice felt heavier than it should.
When morning came, the rain had stopped.
The world looked clean, washed, almost forgiving. But Jayson knew better now. He stepped outside with a new awareness, one that did not yet have words, only weight.
He did not understand the world.
But he had begun to feel it.