Seventeen years in Lakeview Orphanage, and still the word home felt like a lie.
The other kids whispered about him. Families passed him over. His crime? Crimson hair and eyes so dark red they almost glowed. Once, Kieran thought he looked striking—different in a good way. But years of stares, muttered scary, and doors closing in his face had burned that belief down to ash.
So he kept to himself.
He had learned how to live in silence, filling the emptiness with stories in his head—adventures he'd never have, questions about why the world seemed so intent on shutting him out.
But not all silence was chosen. Some of it stayed like scars.
Naomi.
He remembered the little girl who walked straight up to him in the library when no one else dared. Six years old, fearless. She read with him every day, laughed like the whispers never existed. For a while, she made the orphanage feel less like a cage.
And then one morning—she was gone. No note. No goodbye. Just silence.
Kieran had waited in the library for weeks, convinced she'd come back. She never did. From then on, he promised himself: never again. No one would get close enough to break him twice.
By seventeen, he was a master of solitude. The other kids still whispered, but their words bounced off him. He had something they didn't: he could read people. A flicker of an eyebrow, a shift in a shoulder, a glance held too long—he saw the patterns, the tells they didn't even realize they gave away. People were puzzles, and he was always a step ahead.
The library was still his refuge, but this morning the sunlight cutting across his desk reminded him he was late.
One week left until his eighteenth birthday. One week until freedom. No more orphanage. No more rules. Maybe he'd finally search for answers about his parents. About Naomi. Or maybe he'd stop searching altogether.
He pulled on his usual dark hoodie and jeans, brushing crimson strands out of his eyes. His body looked like he trained daily, though he never had. Another thing about himself he couldn't explain. Before leaving, he slipped a small silver cross—the only thing his parents had left him—around his neck.
On the way downstairs, two kids whispered near the staircase
"I didn't take the notebook!" one boy blurted, shifting nervously.
"Sure you didn't," the girl muttered, eyes sliding to the side, foot tapping too fast
Kieran slowed just enough to notice. The twitch of her brow. The stiffness in her shoulders. The glance that didn't land. She was lying. He didn't say a word—just filed it away and kept walking.
Outside, Lakeview City was already alive. The smell of wet pavement and car exhaust clung to the air. Vendors shouted, bikes weaved through traffic, footsteps crowded the sidewalks. Chaotic to most, but to Kieran it was just background noise.
The school loomed ahead—tall brick walls faded with age, windows glaring in the sun. Students laughed, shoved, and called out as they flooded inside.
Kieran slipped through them like a shadow. At his locker, something fluttered to the floor.
A folded note.
He bent down and opened it. The handwriting was neat, deliberate:
I like you. If you feel the same, meet me behind the gym after school.
Kieran scanned the hallway. Students rushed past, shouting to friends, slamming lockers. No one looked at him. No one lingered.
A flicker of curiosity stirred, but he smothered it. No friends. No admirers. More likely some cruel prank, the kind kids played at the end of the year. He folded the note and shoved it into his pocket.
Class passed the way it always did—the teacher droning, chalk scraping, pencils tapping. Kieran sat in the back, eyes half-shut. He knew the material already. Sleep was easier than listening.
The hours blurred until the final bell rang.
Outside, the sun threw long shadows across the pavement. Students scattered in every direction. Kieran walked home alone, the note still pressed in his pocket.
To him, it was just another day. Ordinary. Uneventful.
But it wasn't.
That single piece of paper had already cracked open the world he thought he knew. And soon, it would drag him into something far bigger—and far more dangerous—than anything he had ever imagined.