An author frames a brief piece as only the prologue and epilogue of a larger, unwritten novel, inviting readers to supply the missing middle while signaling a psychological study. The prologue follows a small boy in a crowded dormitory who rises before dawn, counts beds, worries about a sick companion moved to the infirmary, and seeks refuge in storybooks. Nighttime unease and a strange dark shape give way to the appearance of another boy who takes the vacant bed, asks the child's name, and accuses him of having taken that name, provoking themes of identity, loneliness, and imagined companionship.