CHAPTER 3
699 Words
NOISE FINDS ITS WAY IN.
She heard him before she saw him.
Not sound—movement. Too much of it. A presence that refused to soften itself for the room, that cut through space instead of negotiating with it. Jonathan was here.
He came in like the world owed him attention.
The chair scraped loudly across the floor as he dragged it back. A bag thudded down. Someone muttered an apology that sounded more amused than sincere.
She looked up just in time to catch his grin.
Wide. Unapologetic. Dangerous in the way confidence often was.
“Well,” his lips said, moving too fast for comfort, “either this place shrank overnight or everyone’s suddenly very serious.”
She huffed despite herself.
The sky stiffened beside her. Not visibly—but she felt it in the way his shoulder set, the way his fingers paused over the page he’d been reading.
“You’re early,” he said.
“That’s a lie,” the Jonathan replied cheerfully. “I’m exactly on time. Time just doesn’t appreciate me.”
She watched the exchange, lip-reading where she could, filling in the rest with instinct. Jonathan moved like he expected resistance and enjoyed it. His cane tapped once, twice—not cautious, but rhythmic, like punctuation.
He turned his face toward her.
“And you,” he said, grin sharpening, “must be the reason he’s been practicing sign language so intensely.”
Her eyes flicked to the sky.
His jaw tightened.
She raised her brows slowly and wrote.
“Is he always like this?”
The Jonathan leaned over immediately, invading her space without touching it. “Yes,” he said. “And no. Mostly yes.”
The sky sighed. “You’re impossible.”
“Thank you,” he replied. “I work very hard at it.”
She smiled this time—small, reluctant, but real.
Jonathan noticed.
He always noticed, even though he didn’t act like it.
“You smile like you don’t mean to,” he said suddenly.
The sky turned. “What?”
She froze.
The loud-mouth tilted his head, listening—not to sound, but to the shift in the room. “She does,” he continued lightly. “Like it surprises her.”
She narrowed her eyes at him.
“You’re observant”, she wrote, pressing the page into his hand.
“Occupational hazard,” he said. “I grew up with six siblings, before and now that I’m temporarily blind. Silence was suspicious.”
The sky watched them now—not possessive, but alert. Measuring.
The sky felt it and laughed. “Relax. I’m not stealing her. Yet.”
She wrote quickly.
“Yet?, wait temporarily?”
He beamed. “I like ambition. And I got involved in an accident, I’ll and able to see once more with time”.
The sky leaned forward. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Turn people into challenges.”
The Jonathan shrugged. “People do that themselves.”
She looked between them, the air thickening with something unspoken.
Then she stood.
Both boys reacted instantly.
The sky opened his mouth.
The Jonathan lifted a hand.
“Nope,” he said lightly. “Don’t.”
The sky stopped.
Jenny adjusted her bag calmly. Purposefully. She did not stumble.
When she was standing straight, she looked at the Jonathan and wrote:
“Thank you.”
His grin softened—just a fraction.
“For what?”
“For stopping him”.
The sky exhaled slowly. Not angry. Not defensive but aware.
The Jonathan leaned back in his chair. “See?” he said. “Balance. I provide it.”
“You provide chaos,” the sky replied.
“Same thing. Different marketing.”
Jenny shook her head, amused despite herself.
As she left the room, she felt it—the shift.
The sky was still learning where care ended.
The Jonathan knew exactly where lines were.
He just liked stepping over them.
And somewhere between silence and noise, between restraint and disruption, she realized something unsettling:
Both of them saw her.
But only one of them would force the other to learn how
- Writer
