the WAR OF ATTENTION: Time is not greatest value. Attention is.

Richard Hale gives the best hours of every day to a screen and cannot remember a single thing he sees. He is present in every room and absent from all of them, and he is not alone. His whole year group is fighting the same quiet war: Seun chasing a viral moment that ruins a good man, Kristina performing a life she is too exhausted to live, Alvin disappearing into a game while his little brother waits in the doorway, Silvia vanishing under the weight of comparison, Dalton and Jim selling their futures for the look of a life they cannot afford. Then a teacher writes seven words on a blackboard, and Richard's grandfather, an old clockmaker, hands him a watch that has not ticked in eleven years and a single, difficult truth: you become whatever you keep looking at. Across one school year of noise, loss, and slow repair, Richard discovers that the most radical thing a young person can do is choose, on purpose, where to place their attention, and that this choice quietly decides everything.