The rain poured endlessly that night, hammering rooftops and rattling windows as if the heavens themselves were trying to wash the earth clean. The quiet residential neighborhood of Sainan rarely saw such storms, but on this night, wind howled like a beast through the empty streets.
At the edge of the Yūki household's front porch, a wicker basket sat, soaked by the storm. Within it, a baby, barely days old, lay wrapped in a thin white cloth. His small fists weren't curled in distress, his lips weren't trembling with hunger, and not a single tear rolled down his cheeks.
He only stared upward. Unblinking. Silent. Eyes too sharp for a newborn.
The door creaked open.
"Huh…? What's this?" Yūki Saibai muttered, his hair sticking up from staying up too late in his studio. He blinked against the rain before kneeling down.
Inside the basket, the baby tilted his head ever so slightly, as if acknowledging the man. No cooing, no crying. Just… watching.
"Saibai? What are you doing at the door at this hour?" came a soft, tired voice. Yūki Ringo stepped up behind him, holding their infant daughter, Riko, in her arms. Riko fussed a little at the storm's noise, tiny fists waving in the air.
Ringo gasped when she saw the basket. "A baby?! Who would..."
Saibai carefully lifted the child out, noting the strangeness immediately. "He's… warm, but… strange. He's not crying."
The boy's small hand brushed Saibai's sleeve. His eyes, dark, steady, unreadable, met Saibai's without flinching.
Most infants, Saibai thought, carried an innocence that melted hearts. But this one, his gaze carried weight. A depth that belonged to neither child nor man. Almost… alien.
Ringo leaned closer, adjusting Riko on her hip. "Look at him, Saibai. His eyes… they don't look like a baby's."
Riko, sensing another presence, reached her tiny hand toward the newcomer. She made a curious noise, half a laugh, half a gurgle. But the boy in Saibai's arms didn't react. His gaze shifted briefly toward her, then back to the storm, as though she wasn't worth more attention than the rain outside.
Saibai exhaled slowly. "Whoever left him here… we can't just abandon him. It's fate he ended up at our doorstep."
Ringo bit her lip, torn between worry and her natural kindness. "But… we don't know where he came from. What if he's…"
Her thought trailed off when the boy suddenly reached toward her. Not playfully, not desperately, but almost with purpose, his small fingers brushing against her wrist, like testing something.
"…He's cold," Ringo whispered. "Even though his body is warm… his touch feels lonely."
For a long moment, the storm filled the silence. Then, as if a quiet decision had been made, Ringo sighed and cradled him gently in her free arm, beside her own daughter. "Very well. If this is fate, then he will be our son."
Saibai nodded, his usual easygoing smile faint but genuine. "Welcome to the family… Yūki Kaito."
The baby did not smile. Did not cry. Did not laugh.
But as the thunder rolled overhead, a faint flicker of something, something old and buried, passed through his gaze. A life of war. A crown. A love left behind. A family unborn.
And another life of pain, fire, betrayal, and loss.
But he did not remember them. Not yet.
For now, he was only Kaito. The emotionless baby who, unlike any other, had entered the Yūki household in silence.
The storm howled on, as though warning the world: this child will change everything.
Kaito grew in silence.
While Riko babbled, laughed, and demanded attention, Kaito observed. He didn't crawl until he was a year old, not because he couldn't, but because he saw no need to rush. When he finally did, it was with eerie precision, his small hands moving as if calculating each motion. Ringo would find him sitting in corners, staring at shadows, his dark eyes reflecting nothing and everything at once.
"He's like a little ghost," Saibai joked one evening, watching Kaito sit perfectly still while Riko attempted to stack blocks beside him. "A ghost who judges us all."
Ringo didn't laugh. "He's just… different."
Different.
That was the word the neighbors used. The word his teachers would later whisper. The word that followed him like a shadow.
Riko, however, never saw him that way.
To her, Kaito was simply Kaito-nii, the big brother who never played with her but was always there. When she tripped, his hand would shoot out to catch her before she hit the ground. When she cried, he would stand nearby, silent, until she stopped. And when other children teased her, his presence alone was enough to make them back away.
"Kaito-nii is scary," a classmate once whimpered after Kaito had fixed him with a single, unblinking stare.
"No," Riko had said, shaking her head. "He's just… Kaito-nii."
The first time Kaito showed something resembling emotion, he was five.
Riko had been playing in the yard when a stray dog, lean, mangy, and desperate, had lunged at her. Before Ringo could even scream, Kaito was there. He didn't flinch. Didn't hesitate. He stepped between his sister and the animal, his small body shielding hers.
The dog snarled, jaws snapping inches from his face.
Kaito didn't move.
Then, in a voice so calm it sent chills down Ringo's spine, he said:
"Go away."
The dog whimpered. It took a step back. Then another. And then, as if realizing something it couldn't comprehend, it turned and fled.
Ringo, trembling, pulled both children inside. "Kaito… how did you...?"
Kaito didn't answer. He simply looked at his hands, as if surprised by them.
That night, Saibai found him standing by the window, staring at the stars.
"You okay, kid?" Saibai asked, ruffling his hair.
Kaito didn't turn. "I don't know."
Saibai frowned. "You don't know if you're okay?"
"I don't know why I did that."
Saibai knelt beside him. "You protected Riko. That's what big brothers do."
Kaito was silent for a long moment. Then, quietly: "I don't like it when she's hurt."
Saibai smiled. "That's 'cause you love her."
Kaito didn't respond. But his fingers curled into fists, as if the word love was something foreign, something he couldn't quite grasp.
The year Kaito turned six, the Yūki household grew louder.
Ringo returned from the hospital cradling another bundle in her arms, a tiny baby girl with dark hair like Saibai's and the softest cheeks Kaito had ever seen. She wriggled, squeaked, and promptly began wailing in protest at the brightness of the house.
"This is your new little sister, Mikan," Ringo said warmly, lowering herself to sit on the couch. Riko, now a spirited girl of six herself, peeked curiously at the baby and squealed.
"She's so small!" Riko giggled, tugging Kaito's sleeve. "Kaito-nii, look, look! We have another sister!"
Kaito did look. But his gaze was not filled with the innocent fascination of a child meeting a baby for the first time. His eyes were steady, studying the infant with a strange, unspoken awareness, like he was measuring the fragility of life itself.
Mikan squirmed in Ringo's arms, her tiny hands opening and closing as if grasping for something unseen. When her eyes fluttered open, glossy and unfocused, they happened to meet Kaito's.
For the briefest moment, the house grew still.
The baby blinked once. Then, inexplicably, she stopped crying. Her small face softened, and a faint coo slipped out of her mouth, directed at Kaito.
Ringo blinked in surprise. "Oh… she calmed down."
Saibai scratched his cheek, chuckling. "Guess she already likes her big brother."
Riko puffed out her cheeks. "She didn't calm down for me! No fair!"
Kaito tilted his head slightly, but said nothing. Still, his gaze lingered on the newborn longer than anyone expected. Something about the way her tiny hands reached out made his own chest tighten in a way he couldn't explain.
Days turn into months.
Mikan grew quickly, as babies do. She filled the house with cries at night, laughter by day, and endless demands for attention. Riko doted on her endlessly, eager to play the role of "big sister."
Kaito, however, remained an observer. He rarely held Mikan unless asked, rarely engaged in the cooing and tickling games the others did. And yet, he was always there.
When Ringo was too tired to notice, it was Kaito who placed the dropped pacifier back into Mikan's tiny hand.
When Riko grew impatient and accidentally jostled the baby too roughly, it was Kaito who steadied her with one careful motion.
When Saibai joked about how noisy she was, it was Kaito who sat by her crib in the dead of night, unblinking, until her cries subsided.
He didn't smile at her. He didn't laugh. But Mikan, in her infant way, seemed to recognize something in him. Often, when she was nestled in her crib, her little head would turn, not toward her mother, not toward Riko, but toward the silent boy in the corner, watching.
One evening, as summer rain tapped gently against the window, Ringo found Kaito sitting by the crib, staring at Mikan as she slept. His posture was stiff, his expression unreadable as always.
"Kaito," Ringo said softly, kneeling beside him.
He didn't look at her. "She's weak."
Ringo blinked. "She's a baby. All babies are weak."
"No," Kaito murmured, his small voice low, almost analytical. "Her breathing. Her grip. She's weaker than Riko was."
Ringo's heart clenched. She reached into the crib, brushing her daughter's hair tenderly. "You noticed that?"
Kaito's eyes darkened, as though the observation burdened him in ways he didn't understand. "I don't want her to break."
Ringo pulled him gently into her arms, though he didn't resist nor lean in, just sat stiffly, caught in her warmth. "She won't break. Because she has you. She has all of us."
For the first time, his hand twitched against her sleeve, as though fighting with itself. Then, slowly, almost reluctantly, his small fingers curled into the fabric.
The Yūki household carried on, louder and brighter with Mikan's presence. But in the corners of the house, in the quiet moments between laughter and cries, a shadowed truth took root:
Kaito was no ordinary boy. And yet, in his silence, he was beginning to change.
Not for himself. But for them.
For Riko. For Mikan.
For the family who called him brother.
Life in the Yūki household settled into a rhythm. Riko's bright laughter filled the halls, Mikan's cries and babbles wove into the background of their days, and Saibai's late-night scribbles in his studio added a familiar scratching sound to the silence.
Through it all, Kaito moved like a shadow. Present, but apart. Watching, but rarely joining.
One thing, however, became quietly obvious.
Kaito never lingered near the kitchen.
When Ringo called him to help fetch something from the cupboards, his steps slowed before the doorway. He would pass utensils carefully, never reaching too far into the room. Even when Mikan's wailing demanded a warmed bottle, Kaito would stop at the threshold, gaze fixed on the tiled floor as if an unseen line barred him.
At first, Ringo chalked it up to childish stubbornness. "Maybe he's afraid of fire," she mused one night to Saibai, while stirring a pot of curry.
"Or knives," Saibai chuckled, sketching idly in his notebook. "Can't say I blame him. He's a kid, after all."
But Ringo couldn't shake the feeling it wasn't fear. It was… memory.
Whenever the stove hissed with flame, Kaito's expression sharpened, not wide-eyed terror, but a strange tightening, like his body remembered something his mind did not. His right hand, especially, betrayed him.
Always his right hand.
He held it differently from the rest of his body, as though it belonged to someone else. Sometimes he'd cradle it absentmindedly against his chest. Sometimes he'd clench it so tightly his knuckles whitened. And often, when he thought no one was looking, he would stare at his palm with a shadow of confusion in his dark eyes.
One humid evening, Riko noticed.
The two siblings sat on the porch, cicadas buzzing in the distance, the sky painted in orange twilight. Riko swung her legs happily, munching on a popsicle. Beside her, Kaito sat still, his gaze unfocused. His right hand was curled into a fist, pressed against his knee.
"Does it hurt?" Riko asked suddenly.
Kaito blinked, finally looking at her. "…What?"
"Your hand." She pointed with her sticky popsicle. "You always hold it like it's hurt."
Kaito's gaze followed her finger. Slowly, he opened his fist. His palm looked ordinary, smooth, unscarred, no mark of injury. He turned it over, studying the back, then the lines of his fingers.
"I don't know," he said at last, voice low. "It feels… heavy."
Riko tilted her head. "Heavy?"
"Like… something's there. But it's not."
She didn't really understand, but she smiled anyway, as only children could. "Maybe you're secretly a superhero. Like, pow! You've got a magic hand that only works when you're older."
Kaito didn't smile. But he didn't dismiss her either. His gaze lingered on his hand, flexing the fingers slowly, as though testing them.
That night, after everyone had gone to sleep, Ringo passed by his room and paused.
Through the slightly open door, she saw Kaito sitting upright in bed. The moonlight cast his small frame in silver, his eyes fixed on his right hand as he turned it over and over. His face carried no fear, no childish wonder, only a deep, unsettling concentration.
She shivered, watching him for a moment longer before quietly walking away.
Kaito, alone in the dark, clenched his hand once more.
In his chest, something stirred. A flicker of fire. A phantom ache. A memory that was not his, whispering through veins that shouldn't remember.
And though he didn't understand it, though he had no words for it, he knew one thing.
This hand was not just his.
It carried something.
Something waiting.
----
Powerstones? :)