Chapter Text
The orphanage stood at the edge of Tier D, where the city lights didn't reach and the sky hung low with dust. It wasn't much—just a concrete box with flaking paint and barred windows—but it kept out the rain and the cold, and that was enough for most.
Makoto never cried when the others did. He just watched.
He watched the way new kids clung to fraying blankets and the way older ones got mean to stay untouched. He watched the carers—tired, underpaid, arms always full—move like ghosts through the halls.
No one had time for softness here.
If you were quiet, you were forgotten, and if you were loud, you got scolded. And Makoto preferred to be forgotten.
He kept to the corners, small hands curled around paper scraps he saved from the trash—receipts, old ration tickets, anything he could flatten out and draw on with broken pencils.
He drew rooms with tall windows, shops with warm lights, and a street he imagined with a library on one side and a cat sleeping in the sun. He didn't draw people. Just places.
The others called him weird, and other times they even called him ghost boy . He didn't mind. Ghosts couldn't be hurt.
At night, he lay awake while the others snored or whimpered in their sleep. The ceiling above his cot was cracked, and he used to imagine the cracks were stars. He'd trace constellations with his finger in the air, pretending he was somewhere else—somewhere quieter, safer, and warmer. Somewhere real .
No one brought him in. He had no records, no relatives, and no story.
He'd been found on the streets during a cold night—a slip of a child curled beneath a broken market stall, arms wrapped around himself, lips cracked and almost blue, his hair long and partially obscuring his face. Someone called it in—a shopkeeper, maybe, or a patrol officer who pitied him.
He didn't speak at first. Just stared with wide eyes that didn't seem to blink. When they asked his name, he hesitated before whispering, Makoto .
They weren't sure if it was his real name or simply the only word he could remember. The name Makoto was stitched inside the fraying lining of his jacket, the letters faded and almost unreadable. No family name.
Just Makoto .
One of the staff had said it meant truth , once.
He wasn't sure what that meant. Truth was whatever got you through the day. Truth was keeping your mouth shut. Truth was pretending your stomach didn't hurt when you gave your bread roll to someone smaller than you.
But the truth, as far as Makoto knew, was this: the world was cold, bitter, and cruel. It didn't wait for you to be ready. It didn't care if you were small or scared, hungry or alone. It pushed you down, again and again, like the relentless wind that tore at the loose boards of the orphanage.
There was no hand to catch you when you stumbled. No voice to call your name in the dark. Only silence, sharp and empty, stretching out in every direction.
When the nights were the coldest and the hunger gnawed hardest, Makoto wondered if the world was made of shadows—shapes that shifted and vanished the moment you reached for them. Shadows you had to learn to live with or be swallowed whole.
And so, Makoto learned to fold himself small, to keep his hopes locked away beneath layers of quiet. Because hope was a dangerous thing when the world was waiting to break you.
The mornings were always the hardest.
Makoto woke to the sound of yelling—older kids fighting over breakfast scraps or the sharp voice of a carer trying to keep order. The thin walls couldn't block the noise, and sometimes it felt like the chaos would swallow him whole.
He learned to move silently, to slide past shouting and shoving without drawing much attention to himself.
At the mealtime table, he never asked for seconds. He ate slowly, carefully dividing what little he had, sometimes slipping a piece of dry bread to a smaller child nearby.
One boy with dirt-smudged cheeks looked at him once and whispered, "Why do you always sit alone?"
Makoto didn't answer. He only pressed the bread into the boy's hand and looked away.
The boy didn't speak to him again after that.
But every now and again, when Makoto passed by, he'd feel eyes watching him—not with suspicion, but with something quieter. Recognition, maybe. A shared understanding.
Makoto didn't mind. He wasn't looking for friendship. Only peace.
After breakfast came chores. Sweeping, folding, carrying. He was small but careful, and the staff soon learnt he was dependable—so long as they didn't ask him to talk. He didn't complain. He didn't dawdle. He did as he was told, then returned to his corner, to his scraps of paper and half-pencils and imagined cities.
Drawing became his ritual. His shelter.
When the other kids played—loud, messy, and full of scraped knees and laughter that always seemed on the verge of violence—Makoto sat cross-legged in the shade of the stairwell, sketching. A rooftop garden. A quiet alley strung with lights. A cracked teacup filled with steam.
One day, a girl passed him, slowing to peek at the mess of pencil lines in his lap. She was older, bold in the way children who've learnt to fight for everything often are.
"You draw weird stuff," she said.
Makoto didn't answer. He shaded the window of a crooked little bakery, pretending not to hear.
"Why don't you draw people?"
He paused. His pencil hovered over the paper, then dropped a little as he muttered, "People don't stay."
The girl blinked. She didn't respond. She simply stood there a moment longer, watching him with something unreadable in her expression.
Then she left.
Days bled into weeks, and the orphanage remained a blur of grey walls and whispered loneliness. Makoto's world was small—corners to hide in, scraps to draw on, and shadows to disappear into.
But one afternoon, everything shifted.
The orphanage gates rattled, and footsteps echoed down the cracked hallways—louder than usual, filled with purpose and energy. A new face appeared in the common room: a boy a little older than Makoto, with bright eyes that held a spark no one else had.
He moved with quiet confidence, carrying something wrapped in cloth—a worn book, maybe, or a bundle of letters. He didn't rush. He didn't shout. But when he spoke, even the carers paused to listen.
"Hey," the boy said softly, looking directly at Makoto for the first time. "You're Makoto, right?"
Makoto's breath caught. No one ever called his name, other than the carers, as if it mattered.
The boy smiled, a small, genuine curve. "I'm Kosei."
Makoto wanted to look away, to shrink back into the safety of silence. But something in Kosei's eyes held steady—like he wasn't going anywhere.
For the first time in a long time, Makoto felt the flicker of something new.