No one yelled. No one threatened. No one kept track of his mistakes like debts to be repaid.

He didn’t say anything back. But that night, he slept without a single nightmare for the first time in years.

Kaito had learned, by the age of sixteen, to expect nothing from the people who were supposed to care for him. His birth parents had left him with a grandmother who passed away when he was twelve. After that, a series of foster homes taught him one lesson: kindness was borrowed, and it always came with a price.

The Hayami house sat at the end of a quiet street, with a small garden of camellias and a wooden porch that creaked under his hesitant step. A woman with gentle eyes opened the door before he could knock.