The playground was loud in a way that felt unnecessary.
Lune Calder sat on the edge of the sandbox, his shoes aligned neatly side by side, his hands resting flat against his knees. Around him, children ran in uneven circles, their movements erratic and inefficient. Gravel crunched under careless feet. Plastic toys clattered against each other. Voices rose and fell in sharp, unpredictable arcs.
Lune watched.
A boy tripped near the slide. He didn't cry immediately. There was always a delay—Lune had noticed that. A brief, almost confused pause where the body waited for instruction. Then the face changed. Mouth widened. Sound followed. High, sharp, escalating.
One-point-three seconds, Lune estimated.
A girl nearby laughed too loudly at something that wasn't funny anymore. Her laughter arrived late, overshot its purpose, and lingered after the others had stopped. Another child shoved someone else, not hard enough to hurt, just hard enough to provoke reaction. That one cried instantly—no delay at all. Lune made a note of it.
He did not feel anything about any of it.
The teacher on duty, Ms. Han, stood a short distance away, scanning the playground with the distracted vigilance of someone counting time rather than children. Her eyes passed over Lune more than once and slid away each time. He knew why. Stillness read as compliance. Quiet read as good.
She thought he was shy.
Lune tilted his head slightly as a cluster of children ran past him, close enough that one of their sleeves brushed his arm. The contact registered as pressure, temperature, friction. Nothing else followed. No irritation. No pleasure. Just information.
He preferred sitting. Sitting allowed him to see more.
He watched how some children looked toward the teacher before they cried, as if checking whether the sound would be received. He watched how others cried harder when they were already being watched. He watched how pain changed pitch depending on the audience.
A girl fell to her knees near the climbing frame. This one was different. The sound she made was lower, wetter. Blood appeared quickly—too quickly—beading along her skin before gravity pulled it down. Red against pale. The color was vivid, almost clean.
The girl stared at her knee for a moment, confused. Then she screamed.
Children scattered. Someone shouted for the teacher. Ms. Han spun around, alarm snapping into her posture as she hurried over. The sound grew louder, rawer, as if volume could reverse damage.
Lune did not move.
He watched the blood slide down the girl's leg and drip onto the concrete. He watched her hands hover uselessly, unsure whether to touch or pull away. He watched the teacher kneel, her voice pitching into practiced comfort.
"Don't look, sweetheart. It's okay. It's okay."
Lune looked.
The girl's crying intensified when she noticed him watching. Her face contorted further, as if his attention required escalation. Lune noted the pattern and filed it away.
Ms. Han glanced up briefly, her eyes flicking toward him. Her expression softened.
"Lune," she said gently. "You don't need to stare."
He blinked once, slowly, and looked down at his hands. He adjusted his posture to appear smaller. Less present. The teacher's attention moved on.
Still, Lune could hear the crying. He could hear the way it fractured into gasps. He could hear how the sound changed once the other children gathered closer.
He felt nothing.
When the bell rang and the children were ushered inside, the concrete beneath the girl's knee was already stained, the blood drying into something darker and less vivid. Lune stepped carefully around it as he followed the line indoors, making sure his shoes didn't touch the mark.
He didn't know why that felt important.
He only knew that while everyone else seemed shaken, something inside him remained completely, unmistakably still.
And for the first time, that difference did not go unnoticed.