The boxes went up around Mateo's bed like a low wall he had built himself. For nineteen years these four walls had kept his posters, his arguments, and every plan he never told anyone. Now they kept only the sound of him moving through them. He folded a half-finished sketchbook into the last box and felt the odd weight of a chapter closing quietly. Outside, the light came up slow and long across a floor he had crawled on as a toddler and paced on as a restless sixteen-year-old.