The door to the matron's office creaked with a measured reluctance, as if it understood precisely who passed through. Light from the courtyard's pitted glass struggled in, leaving the room neither bright nor dim, but suspended in a pale chiaroscuro that did nothing to warm the wood-paneled austerity within. In that moment between the door opening and the matron looking up from her ledger, Johan Liebert stood framed—immaculate, platinum hair catching every insipid thread of sun, eyes the color of sky pressed flat and cold behind the window. He did not pause for permission.
The matron's pen faltered, a bead of ink blossoming on the registry. "You don't knock anymore?" she said, her tone bland, as though she could sand the edge off anything that entered her office simply by refusing to meet its sharpness head-on.
Johan stood a polite distance from her desk, hands folded, no more or less than precisely as much as was expected of a well-bred orphan. His gaze skimmed the room's hard lines, the meticulous disorder of records, the dust filigreed in the light. He blinked once, slow and deliberate. "I've been leaving sweets for the new boy," he said.
The matron's brow contracted above the set of her mouth; not quite a frown, but something smaller and harder. "That's not your place to decide."
Johan did not move. There was nothing to betray surprise or chagrin. "He is a good boy," he continued, "and he cries at night when he thinks no one is listening."
Her lips flattened. "You know the rules, Johan. We have a schedule. Gifts create dependencies. It upsets the others."
"Yes," Johan said.
She waited, and when nothing else came, sighed through her nose. "This is the third time this week you've come to tell me something like this."
He inclined his head, not in apology but in acknowledgment, as if tallying a statistic. "I just thought you should know."
She looked at him more closely now, wary. The previous times he had confessed—once to reorganizing the staff files without permission, once to rearranging the infirmary's supply drawers—she hadn't been able to decide whether he was bragging, manipulating, or simply observing her reaction.
The matron watched him, fingers braced against the edge of her desk. Johan's face was unmarred by the usual history of orphanage life—no raw, chapped lips, no brash or bruised self-assertion, no awkwardness in the carriage of limbs. The only thing that made him strange was his perfection, the way he fit so seamlessly into whatever shape the moment required. She had read somewhere that this was the true mark of dangerous intelligence.
"You're clever, Johan," she said, voice carefully modulated. "And I want to trust you. But you must not stand out. Do you understand what I'm telling you?"
Johan nodded, a motion so smooth it seemed rehearsed. "Yes," he said, and the word was empty of everything except perfect, hollow compliance.
She was silent for a moment, measuring him against the window, the wall, herself. "You have a bright future," she said. "Don't jeopardize it by—"
She hesitated, unsure what, precisely, Johan was doing to jeopardize anything. He had never been caught in a lie, never struck another child, never even raised his voice. Only small deviations, like sweets left where they shouldn't be, or papers organized so efficiently that the staff grew uneasy at how quickly he found their lost things.
She tried again. "The new boy has had a difficult transition. It's better for him to acclimate to routine, rather than be… singled out. Even for kindness."
Johan's eyes did not flicker. "It won't happen again," he said.
She wanted to believe him, but the line between his words and their meaning was always a little blurry, as if he inhabited language from a vantage she could not access. He said the right things, always, but it was like watching a puppet perform sincerity—elegant, convincing, but never quite alive.
"That will be all," she said, dismissing him with a return to her ledger. She waited for the door to click before allowing herself to breathe deeply, as if to clear something unscented from the air.
Johan exited as he had entered: noiseless, unhurried, leaving the office exactly as he'd found it. In the corridor, he paused before a barred window and looked out at the other children in the yard. His hands moved to his pockets, and for a moment the ghost of a smile traced his lips—so slight it could be a trick of the glass.
When he was certain the matron was not watching, he reached into his jacket and withdrew a single wrapped sweet. He balanced it on the narrow ledge of the window, where the new boy would find it later. Then he moved on, footsteps even, silence folding itself neatly in his wake.
In the office, the matron stared at her ledger and tried not to dwell on the peculiar chill that lingered after his departure. She told herself it was only the draft. It was never only the draft.