Chapter Text
The third-floor balcony groaned whenever someone leaned too hard against the rusted railing.
Yuuji never minded the sound.
It felt alive. The building itself wasn't.
The orphanage or hospital for mentally unstable kids, depending on which staff member you asked. sat on a hill overlooking a dying town. The walls were stained yellow with age, the windows cracked in places, and the paint peeled in long strips that fluttered whenever the wind picked up. Most people simply called it The Home.
Nobody called it home.
The evening sky was turning orange, the kind of sunset that made everything look warmer than it really was. It painted the concrete walls gold and softened the rust on the railings.
Yuuji sat cross-legged on the balcony floor, his back against the wall.
His t-shirt had once been black. Now it was somewhere between gray and brown from years of washing. The collar was stretched loose and one sleeve had a tiny tear near the shoulder.
Beside him sat Megumi.
Megumi's donated sweater was at least three sizes too big. The sleeves swallowed his hands completely unless he rolled them up, and the collar slipped down one shoulder. Whoever had donated it had probably been an adult.
Neither of them complained. You didn't complain about donations. You wore what you got and if you were lucky, it fit. Megumi held a cigarette between two fingers.
A single cigarette, a treasure. He took a drag before passing it over.
Yuuji accepted it carefully. "Thanks."
"Don't thank me. You paid half."
Yuuji grinned. "Still."
The cigarette had cost them two manga volumes. An absurd but a fair trade. Money meant nothing inside The Home. None of the kids could leave. The staff kept any cash donations locked away. Even if someone somehow got money, there was nowhere to spend it.
So everything ran on trades : food favors, clean blankets, good socks, snack, books, manga. Stories were worth a lot,especially complete stories which almost never happened.
Last month Megumi had discovered the first volume of a romance manga buried inside a box of donations. The cover was faded and bent, but every page was there. For weeks they'd read it over and over. Then, somehow, Yuuji had managed to get the second volume.
The prohibited wing was a place most kids avoided even thinking about, a sealed-off corridor at the far end of the building where the lights flickered more often than they stayed steady and the air always smelled faintly of antiseptic and something sour underneath.
It housed the worst cases, kids locked away, doors sealed, windows barred, the ones who screamed or talked to empty air, the ones nobody mentioned. Somehow Yuuji had gone in anyway, heart pounding as he passed rattling doors and whispering voices, until he reached one quiet room where a boy with bright eyes and a crooked smile introduced himself as Gojo.
Gojo had a bunch of other stuff too, scattered around his room like they actually mattered...things Yuuji thought were kind of weird to treat like treasures. A cracked plastic spoon, a single worn-out sock with no pair, a bent fork, a red plastic cup, even a tiny smooth rock he said was “perfect.”
Normal, useless stuff. But Gojo talked about them like they were important, like each one meant something.
And after talking through the door, like nothing about the place mattered, Gojo had casually handed over the second volume of the manga in exchange for a single slice of chocolate cake Yuuji had smuggled in, as if it were the most ordinary trade in the world.
The moment he'd brought it back, Megumi had stared at him like he'd performed a miracle.
Two consecutive volumes of the same manga? It was practically priceless.
So naturally they'd traded both away for a cigarette.
The cigarette passed between them again. Smoke drifted into the orange sky. For a while they sat quietly, watching. Doing what seventeen-year-olds trapped in a place like this always did.
Nothing.
Then Yuuji straightened. "Huh?"
A car was climbing the long driveway. A nice expensive car, not one of the staff vans, like a real real car.
Yuuji's eyes widened."Oh."
Megumi followed his gaze. The cigarette paused halfway to his mouth. "Oh."
The car continued toward the main building. Yuuji sat up immediately. "You think they're here to adopt someone?"
Megumi let out a snort. "At this place?"
"Maybe."
"Dude."
"What?"
Megumi took another drag before speaking. "I don't think it's for the likes of us." The excitement in Yuuji's face dimmed slightly. "What does that mean?"
Megumi gestured toward the car. "Look at it... it's a nice car...probably here for someone smart."
Megumi leaned back against the wall. "Maybe Inumaki?"
"The mute genius?"
"The mute genius."
Yuuji laughed. Inumaki occupied a strange position in The Home. He barely spoke and spent most of his time reading. He could solve math problems faster than the teachers.
Everyone thought he was weird but everyone also thought he was smarter than the staff.
Megumi nodded toward the building. "Rich people come for the useful ones."
Yuuji looked away. The car disappeared beneath them.
His stomach sank a little.Last month a boy had been adopted. He'd been adopted because he was huge for his age and could lift feed sacks by himself.
The farmers who took him home had practically said as much, said he would be a good worker.
The staff had called it a happy ending. Yuuji wasn't sure it sounded happy.
Still it had been an ending...like a way out. People who came here to adopt rarely did it out of kindness.
Most of them were looking for something they could use.
At seventeen, he and Megumi were running out of time.
One more year then eighteen. Then they would be transferred somewhere else.
Most days were measured out in pills. Little white tablets that dulled everything down, slowed thoughts, softened edges. Tranquilizers, the older kids called them. Enough to keep everyone calm, quiet, manageable.
They taught them basic things too like simple math, reading, how to follow instructions, but nothing that felt like it would matter outside these walls. Not that anyone really expected to leave.
Truthfully, they were kept here for a reason. The staff never said it outright, but everyone understood. Some of them were unpredictable. Some of them had hurt people before. Some of them might again. It was easier to keep them contained, medicated, forgotten. Safer for everyone else.
When Yuuji had first come here, he hadn't been smiling. He barely remembered the ride, just flashing lights, hands pulling him out of a dark room, voices shouting, someone wrapping a blanket around him while he shook so hard his teeth hurt.
They said he'd been saved, rescued from a trafficking ring at twelve, but the word meant nothing to him then. Everything after felt too bright and too loud.
For months he couldn't sleep without screaming, couldn't eat without throwing up, couldn't look at people without feeling like they were going to hurt him.
The doctors called it severe trauma and gave him pills.
Now the screaming had stopped, the shaking had stopped...most things had stopped. Sometimes after taking the pills, he would sit for hours, staring at the wall, not thinking, not feeling, just there. He didn't know why. He didn't know if it was better.
Megumi had been different. Yuuji didn't know exactly why he'd ended up here, Megumi never talked about it but everyone knew he'd spent his first year in the prohibited wing, locked away with the worst cases.
Then one day he'd been moved. Suddenly he was here, sitting on a balcony, sharing cigarettes like it was normal. Yuuji had never asked, and Megumi had never offered. Some things stayed buried in this place.
Far below them, someone stepped inside the expensive car, and even from the balcony they could see a flash of white hair, Inumaki.