When he finished, the man stood silent for a long moment. Jayden wished he hadn't said so much.
But then the man spoke, calm and deliberate: "I've seen doors close for reasons just like that. Doors that should have opened. Doors that could have changed a kid's life."
The city hummed around them: distant sirens, the whir of a passing train, a dog barking somewhere down the block. Yet somehow, the street felt still.
"What's your name, son?" the man finally asked.
"Jayden," he whispered. "Jayden Cole."
"I'm Elliot," the man replied. "And I think I understand more than you realize."
Jayden didn't know what to say. He nodded weakly.
Elliot looked back at the academy's imposing gates, the stone pillars standing tall like they guarded something sacred. "Tomorrow," he said quietly, "you'll go back inside that gate in your mind. Over and over. Kids do that. So do adults. But don't let that be the place where your story stops."
Jayden blinked. "I don't have anywhere else to go."
Elliot's eyes softened. "Maybe you do. You just don't know it yet."
A thin silence stretched between them, carrying something unspoken—something that felt like the beginning of a shift in the air.
The bus finally turned the corner, approaching slowly. Jayden took one last glance at Elliot, confused by this oddly calm, strangely intense man who didn't walk away like everyone else.
But before he could say anything, Elliot murmured, "We'll talk again, Jayden."
The doors of the bus hissed open. Jayden stepped on, the warmth fogging his glasses as he moved to an empty seat near the back. As the bus pulled away, he glanced out the window.
Elliot Mercer stood alone under the streetlight, hands in his pockets, watching the bus fade into the snowy dark like he wasn't done with this night, or with Jayden.
And for the first time since leaving those academy doors, Jayden felt something unfamiliar flicker in his chest: not hope, not yet—just a question.
Why him? And why now?