The first thing Kai noticed every morning was the silence.
Not the peaceful kind. Not the gentle quiet of a world still sleeping. This was the silence of a phone that never buzzed anymore. The silence of an empty seat beside him in the cafeteria. The silence of three months since anyone had said his name just because they were happy to see him.
Kai rolled over in bed and stared at the ceiling. Same cracks. Same water stain in the corner that looked vaguely like a map of South America. Same gray light filtering through curtains he never fully opened.
His phone screen lit up. 6:47 AM. No messages.
He'd stopped checking expectantly around week six. Now it was just a reflex, like breathing. You didn't expect anything from breathing either. You just did it because stopping wasn't an option.
His mom's voice floated up the stairs. "Kai! You're going to be late!"
He wasn't late. He was never late anymore. Being early meant standing in hallways watching other people laugh with other people. Being exactly on time meant sliding into class just before the bell, eyes forward, hood up, existing in the narrow space between present and invisible.
He preferred invisible.
Jefferson High was three weeks into the second semester, and Kai had already mastered the art of being a ghost.
He knew the routes. Which stairwells stayed empty between periods. Which bathroom stalls had locks that actually worked. Which corner of the library the librarian forgot about. He moved through the hallways like a fish moving through shadow—present, but never seen.
Today, like every day, he made it to Mr. Harrison's English class with exactly thirty seconds to spare. Desk in the back, second from the window. Not the very back—that was obvious, a cry for help disguised as isolation. Second from the back was strategic. Close enough to the wall to lean against it. Far enough from the front to avoid accidental eye contact.
Mr. Harrison was droning about symbolism in some book Kai hadn't read. He used to be a good student. Back in his old school, back before the move, he'd actually raised his hand sometimes. Now he just watched the second hand on the clock sweep in its endless circle.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
Lunch was the worst.
Kai sat at the far end of a table near the windows, eating a sandwich he didn't taste while pretending to look at his phone. Around him, the cafeteria roared with conversation, laughter, the chaos of two hundred teenagers packed into one space. It was louder than silence, somehow. More lonely.
A group of boys at the next table were watching something on someone's phone, elbowing each other, arguing about whatever it was. One of them glanced in Kai's direction, and for a split second, Kai felt his stomach tighten—the old reflex, the hope that someone might—
The boy looked away. Said something to his friends. They laughed.
Kai went back to his sandwich.
He was halfway through his third bite when he heard it.
Thwack.
Not loud. Not close. Just a sharp, clean sound cutting through the cafeteria noise for a fraction of a second. From somewhere outside, maybe. A door opening and closing? Something falling?
Thwack. Thwack.
There it was again. A rhythm. A pattern.
Kai found himself listening instead of blocking everything out. That was new. He'd spent months building walls between himself and the world, and here he was, leaning slightly toward a window, trying to place a sound he couldn't identify.
Thwack. Pause. Thwackthwack. Pause. THWACK.
Loud that time. Decisive. Like someone had meant it.
Kai shook his head and went back to his sandwich. Whatever it was, it wasn't his business. Nothing here was his business. That was the whole point.
After school, his mom texted him.
Mom: Going to be late tonight. Client meeting ran over. There's leftovers in the fridge. Love you.
Kai stared at the message. She meant well. She always meant well. She was the reason they'd moved—a better job, better opportunities, a fresh start. She'd said those words so many times on the drive to this city. A fresh start, Kai. Just give it time.
Time. Three months of it. And all he'd gotten was better at being alone.
He texted back: k
Then he shoved his phone in his pocket and kept walking.
He wasn't sure where he was going. His feet carried him past the school gates, past the bus stop where students clustered in their noisy groups, past the convenience store with the cat that always slept on the newspaper rack. The afternoon was cold but not freezing, the sky a pale winter blue that felt farther away than it should.
Thwack.
Kai stopped.
He was standing in front of a community center he'd passed a hundred times without really seeing it. A beige building with faded murals on the walls, a parking lot with more cracks than pavement, and a set of glass doors that led into a vaguely lit lobby.
The sound had come from inside.
Thwackthwackthwack.
Fast this time. A rapid exchange. Then laughter—genuine laughter, the kind that made you lean forward, the kind Kai hadn't heard from himself in months.
He stood there for a full minute, hands in his pockets, breath misting in the cold air. He should keep walking. He should go home, eat the leftovers, stare at his phone until it was late enough to justify sleeping. That was the routine. That was safe.
But his feet didn't move.
Thwack.
Something about that sound. It wasn't just noise. It was... purposeful. Someone was out there, on the other side of those glass doors, doing something that made that sound on purpose. And the laughter after—that was purposeful too.
Kai pulled one hand from his pocket and pushed the door open.
The lobby smelled like floor wax and old sneakers. A bulletin board covered in flyers announced yoga classes, bingo nights, a lost cat with very specific markings. To his left, a set of double doors had small rectangular windows at eye level, and through them, light was moving.
Thwack. Thwack. Laughter.
Kai walked toward the doors before he could talk himself out of it.
He stood on his toes and looked through the window.
Inside was a gymnasium. Not a fancy one—the floor had tape marks from sports he didn't recognize, the bleachers were the old wooden kind that folded into the wall, and the lighting was that particular shade of fluorescent that made everyone look slightly ill.
But none of that mattered.
Because on the court, two kids were playing badminton.
At least, he thought it was badminton. They had rackets. They had a net. There was a shuttlecock—white, feathered, moving so fast Kai's eyes could barely track it. But "playing" might have been generous. They were swinging wildly, missing half the shots, chasing the birdie like it owed them money.
One of them—a boy with messy hair and glasses that kept sliding down his nose—swung so hard he spun in a complete circle and landed on his back. The shuttlecock drifted gently down and hit him in the face.
And the other one—a girl with bright eyes and a laugh that Kai could hear even through the doors—doubled over, pointing, absolutely losing it.
"Leo!" she gasped between laughs. "You—your face—oh my god—"
"It was a strategic fall!" the boy on the floor protested, still not getting up. "I'm distracting the birdie. It's a legitimate technique."
"It hit you in the EYE."
"My eye is fine. The birdie, however, is now overconfident. That's when we strike."
The girl laughed harder, and after a moment, the boy on the floor started laughing too.
Kai watched from the doorway, invisible behind the glass. He didn't know these people. He didn't know anything about them. But watching them laugh—watching them miss and fall and fail and still laugh—did something to his chest he couldn't name.
He turned to leave.
And then the girl looked up.
Their eyes met through the glass.
Kai froze. Caught. His first instinct was to bolt, to disappear back into the hallway and out the front doors and never come back. But his legs wouldn't move.
The girl's face split into a grin. She waved. Actually waved. Like she knew him. Like she'd been expecting him.
Then she was jogging toward the doors, and Kai realized with growing horror that she was going to open them.
"Hey!" The doors swung open, and suddenly she was right there, close enough to see the tiny freckles across her nose, the sweat on her forehead, the complete and total lack of judgment in her eyes. "Were you watching?"
"I—" Kai's voice came out like a croak. He cleared his throat. "I was just leaving. Sorry. I didn't mean to—"
"Do you play?"
The question hit him like a shuttlecock to the face. "What?"
"Badminton. Do you play?" She tilted her head, studying him with an intensity that made his skin prickle. "You've got the look."
"What look?"
"The 'I'm thinking about something else but I don't know it yet' look." She shrugged. "My mom says I make up looks for people. She's probably right. But seriously—you wanna try?"
Behind her, the boy—Leo—had finally gotten up and was brushing himself off. He waved at Kai too, completely unbothered by the fact that a stranger had been watching him eat shuttlecock with his face.
"Don't mind Maya," Leo called out. "She recruits everyone. Last week she tried to get the janitor to play doubles."
"The janitor was very athletic," Maya shot back over her shoulder. "He just didn't know it yet."
Kai stood in the doorway, caught between every instinct telling him to run and something else—something small and quiet—telling him to stay.
"I don't... I've never played," he said.
Maya's grin widened. "Perfect. Leo's been playing for three months and he's still terrible. You'll fit right in."
"Hey!"
"What? It's true. You fall down. A lot."
"I fell down ONCE today."
"You fell down four times. I counted."
Kai felt something twitch at the corner of his mouth. It took him a second to realize it was almost a smile.
"Come on." Maya stepped back, holding the door open with her foot. "Just hit it a few times. If you hate it, you can leave. No pressure."
No pressure. Such a simple promise. Such an impossible thing.
But the gym was warm. And Maya's smile was easy. And Leo was already picking up an extra racket, holding it out like an offering.
Kai's feet carried him through the doorway.
The racket felt wrong in his hand.
Too light. Too balanced. He was used to weight, to resistance, to things that felt like they could do damage if you swung them hard enough. This was just... plastic and strings and a grip that smelled faintly of someone else's sweat.
"Okay, basic rules," Maya said, bouncing on her heels across the net from him. Leo had retreated to the side to watch, still laughing at his own private jokes. "The birdie has to stay inside the lines. You hit it over the net. I hit it back. We keep going until someone misses. That's it."
"That's it?"
"For now! Ready?"
Kai barely had time to nod before Maya tossed the shuttlecock up and swung.
Thwack.
The white blur came at him fast—faster than he expected, faster than his brain could process. He swung.
And missed completely.
The shuttlecock bounced off the floor behind him. Maya's face appeared over the net, grinning.
"Okay, new rule: try to hit it."
"I tried."
"Try harder!"
She served again.
Thwack.
This time Kai's racket connected—sort of. The shuttlecock glanced off the frame and shot sideways, straight into the wall. But he'd hit it. He'd actually hit it.
"YES!" Maya pumped her fist. "You're a natural!"
"I hit it into the wall."
"The wall counts! In your heart, it counts."
From the sidelines, Leo snorted. "She says that to everyone. She told me my first hit was 'aggressively creative.' I hit the ceiling fan."
"The ceiling fan deserved it."
Kai felt it again—that twitch at the corner of his mouth. Stronger this time.
"Again," he said.
Maya served. Kai missed. Served again. Kai hit it back, a weak, floating return that Maya smashed into the floor on his side. Served again. Kai returned, Maya returned, Kai returned—a rally. A real rally. Three shots. Four. Five.
Then Kai's foot slipped, his swing went wild, and the shuttlecock landed in the net.
But for those five seconds, something had happened.
His mind had gone quiet.
No replaying awkward moments. No wondering if anyone would ever text him. No spiral of thoughts about the future, the past, the weight of being new and alone and invisible. Just the shuttlecock. Just the strings. Just the next shot.
Maya was watching him with those bright eyes. "See? You've got it."
"I missed."
"Everyone misses. Leo misses constantly. It's not about missing." She walked around the net, picked up the shuttlecock, and held it out to him. "It's about wanting to hit the next one."
Kai looked at the shuttlecock in her palm. Small. Feathers slightly bent. A little scuffed from all the misses.
He took it.
"Can we do that again?"
Maya's smile could have lit the whole gym. "Leo! Stop sitting there! We've got a new player to break in!"
Leo groaned dramatically but grabbed his racket. "Fine, but I'm calling first dibs on being his doubles partner. I call it the 'Disaster Duo.'"
"That's the worst team name I've ever heard."
"It's MEMORABLE."
Kai stood there, holding a borrowed racket and a slightly damaged shuttlecock, watching these two strangers argue about team names like it was the most important thing in the world.
And for the first time in three months, he didn't feel invisible.
Two hours later, Kai stumbled out of the community center into the darkening evening.
His arm ached. His legs ached. He'd fallen once, tripped twice, and been hit in the back of the head by a wild swing from Leo that Maya insisted was "strategic miscommunication."
He'd also laughed. Actually laughed. Twice. The first time when Leo tried to do a fancy behind-the-back shot and hit himself in the knee. The second time when Maya attempted to teach him a proper serve and demonstrated by sending the shuttlecock directly into a light fixture, where it remained stuck for a glorious ten minutes.
His phone buzzed.
Mom: Home soon. Did you eat?
Kai stared at the message. Then he typed something he hadn't typed in months.
Kai: Yeah. I'm good.
He put his phone away and looked back at the community center. The lights were still on in the gym. Through the glass doors, he could see Maya and Leo packing up, still talking, still laughing.
He didn't know their last names. He didn't know what classes they were in or what music they liked or whether they'd remember him tomorrow.
But tomorrow was Saturday.
And Saturday, Maya had said, was when they always played.
Kai turned toward home. The streets didn't feel as empty as they had this morning. The sky didn't feel as far away.
Behind him, faint through the doors, he heard it one more time.
Thwack.
He smiled.