The package fit perfectly in the crook of Haru Minase's arm, like it had been molded there.
This was his favorite part of the delivery job—the walk between destinations. No one expected him to talk. No one expected him to be anything. Just a boy in a slightly-too-large uniform carrying a slightly-too-large box, moving through the world like background noise.
Haru was good at being background noise.
The Sakura Heights Apartment Complex rose before him like a monument to faded ambition. Built in the 80s, painted in optimism, and now settled into a comfortable decay. Moss crept up the foundation. The vending machine by the entrance sold drinks that had been there so long they'd achieved antique status.
Unit 4B, the delivery slip read. Recipient: Kaelvar.
No apartment number after the name. Just... Kaelvar. Like Cher. Or Godzilla.
Haru checked his phone. 4:47 PM. The autumn sun had already begun its retreat, painting the complex in long shadows. He'd done this route before, but never the fourth floor. The fourth floor was always "under maintenance" or "closed for plumbing." The other delivery drivers traded rumors like trading cards.
"I heard the guy up there hasn't left in twenty years."
"Nah, my cousin did a delivery once. Said the door handle was warm. Like, body-temperature warm."
"Stop. You're messing with me."
"Swear to god. He quit the next week."
Haru had dismissed all of it. People loved to make ordinary things extraordinary because ordinary was too boring to stomach. The fourth floor probably just had a guy with agoraphobia and a very understanding landlord.
The stairwell smelled like mildew and regret.
First floor. Second. Third. The concrete steps grew older, dustier. The fluorescent lights flickered with increasing desperation. By the time Haru reached the third-floor landing, two of them had given up entirely, leaving stretches of near-darkness.
Fourth floor.
The hallway stretched before him, narrower than the others. Three doors. 4A, 4B, 4C. The numbers were tarnished brass, the kind that hadn't been polished since the building was young. A single light fixture at the far end buzzed like a dying insect.
And it was cold.
Not the normal autumn cold. This was the kind of cold that made the hair on Haru's arms stand up, that whispered turn back in a language his bones understood but his brain couldn't translate.
Just a draft, he told himself. Old building. Bad insulation.
He walked toward 4B.
The door was... breathing.
Haru stopped ten feet away and blinked. Then blinked again. Because doors didn't breathe. Doors were wood and paint and hinges. Doors were inanimate.
But this one—this one expanded slightly, just at the center, like someone inhaling from the other side. Then it contracted. A slow, rhythmic pulse.
Inhale. Exhale.
Inhale. Exhale.
Haru's heart hammered against his ribs. It's a trick of the light. It's the flickering bulb. It's—
The door growled.
Low. Deep. The kind of sound that didn't travel through air so much as through bone. It vibrated up through Haru's sneakers, settled in his chest, and reminded every primal cell in his body that humans used to be prey.
RUN, his hindbrain screamed. RUN NOW.
But his legs wouldn't move.
And then—the door opened.
Not all the way. Just a crack. Just enough to reveal darkness so complete it seemed to drink the hallway light. Just enough to reveal—
Nothing.
Just darkness.
Just a door that had opened itself.
The delivery slip trembled in Haru's sweaty hand. Leave it, he thought. Just leave it by the door and go. That's what anyone sane would do.
But the slip said SIGNATURE REQUIRED in bold red letters. And Haru's social anxiety had its own special brand of tyranny: the fear of doing something wrong outweighed the fear of dying.
"I-I—" His voice cracked. He cleared his throat. "Delivery for... Kaelvar?"
The darkness didn't answer.
But something in it shifted.
Haru's thumb found the edge of the door, pressing it open further. Stupidstupidstupid, his brain chanted, but his body was already moving, because if he didn't get that signature, he'd have to explain to his supervisor why he failed a delivery, and explaining things to people was the actual worst—
The threshold.
His sneaker crossed it.
The moment his foot touched the floor inside, the world changed.
It wasn't dramatic. No lightning. No thunder. Just a subtle shift, like stepping from one room into another—except the room he'd stepped into was built from different rules.
The door slammed shut behind him.
Haru spun, reaching for the handle. His fingers passed through it.
Through it. Like it was made of smoke. Like it was never there at all.
"I wouldn't bother."
The voice came from everywhere and nowhere. Deep. Resonant. The kind of voice that could command storms or, apparently, make teenage delivery boys question every life choice that had led to this moment.
Haru turned.
The apartment wasn't dark anymore. It was lit—but from no identifiable source. Light simply existed in the space, ambient and sourceless, revealing:
A living room that had last seen a dust cloth during the Bush administration. Piles of yellowed newspapers. Stacks of books in languages Haru didn't recognize. A coffee table covered in rings from cups that had long since been removed. A television that looked like it weighed four hundred pounds and hadn't worked since the Berlin Wall fell.
And shadows that twitched.
Not flickered. Twitched. Like they were impatient. Like they wanted to be somewhere else but were stuck to their objects out of obligation.
In the center of it all, in an armchair that had definitely seen better centuries, sat a man.
Man was perhaps generous.
He was tall. That was the first thing Haru noticed. Even sitting, he seemed to occupy more vertical space than physics should allow. Long limbs. Sharp features. Cheekbones that could cut glass. And his skin—
His skin had veins.
Faintly glowing veins.
Pulsing with soft blue light, like rivers on a map of somewhere that wasn't Earth.
The man—the creature—regarded Haru with eyes the color of thunderclouds. Old eyes. Eyes that had watched civilizations rise and fall and probably found the whole thing mildly tedious.
"You stepped over the threshold," he said. His voice was quieter now, but no less overwhelming. Like a storm deciding to whisper. "That makes you responsible now."
Haru's mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.
Words had left him. Words had packed their bags and emigrated to a country where doors didn't breathe and ancient beings didn't make cryptic pronouncements.
The creature—Kaelvar? Kael?—sighed. It was a sound of profound, millennia-deep exhaustion.
"The package," he said flatly. "You're holding it like it contains your soul. Either give it here or leave. Preferably leave. I was napping."
Napping. He'd been napping. Like this was normal. Like Haru was the weird one for standing frozen in an apartment where shadows had opinions.
Haru looked down at his hands. Still holding the package. Still alive. Still, technically, functioning.
"I—" He swallowed. Tried again. "I need a signature."
The creature—Kael—blinked.
"A signature."
"Yes. For the—" Haru gestured vaguely with the package. "Delivery."
Silence stretched between them. The shadows twitched harder, like they were laughing.
"You want me," Kael said slowly, "to sign something."
"It's... procedure."
Another silence. Then, impossibly, the corner of Kael's mouth twitched. Not a smile—nothing so warm—but something adjacent to it. Amusement, perhaps. The universe's oldest being encountering bureaucracy for the first time in centuries.
"Show me."
Haru approached on legs that felt borrowed from someone else. The distance between the door and the armchair was maybe fifteen feet. It felt like crossing an ocean. With each step, he noticed more: the faded tapestry on the wall depicting a village and a storm; the kettle on the stove that whistled softly despite no flame beneath it; the way the shadows parted to let him pass, like minions clearing a path for their master.
He stopped before the armchair.
Up close, Kael was even more overwhelming. The glowing veins traced patterns across his temples, down his neck, disappearing beneath his collar. His clothes were old-fashioned—a high-collared shirt, dark trousers—but they looked lived in, comfortable, like he'd been wearing them since before Haru's grandparents were born.
"Pen," Kael said.
Haru fumbled in his pocket, produced the delivery company's cheap ballpoint.
Kael took it. Examined it like it was an artifact from an alien civilization. Pressed the clicker. Clicked it again. His eyebrows rose slightly.
"Fascinating."
He signed the slip. His handwriting was elegant, old-fashioned, loops and flourishes that belonged on parchment rather than carbon-copy paper. Kaelvar. No last name. Just that.
"Thank you," Haru whispered.
Kael handed back the pen and the slip. His fingers brushed Haru's. They were warm. Not fever-warm, but alive-warm. Like a person's. Like anyone's.
"You're scared," Kael observed. No judgment. Just fact.
Haru nodded. He couldn't seem to stop nodding.
"Good. Fear is sensible." Kael settled back into his chair, the ancient leather creaking beneath him. "Fear means you understand that the world is larger than your experience of it. Most humans your age have forgotten that. They walk through the world like they own it." His eyes drifted to the window, where the autumn sky had darkened to bruised purple. "They don't own it. They're borrowing it. And the interest is due eventually."
The kettle whistled louder.
Haru looked toward the kitchen. The stove was still off. The flame was still absent. But the kettle vibrated with building pressure, steam billowing from its spout.
"Your tea," Kael said.
"I—I don't—"
"It's not for you." Kael rose from the chair, and the movement was wrong—too smooth, too continuous, like he didn't have joints so much as he simply decided where his body should be. He walked to the kitchen, retrieved the kettle, and poured water into a pot that hadn't been there a moment ago. "It's for the storm."
Haru's brain short-circuited. "The... storm?"
"Outside. It's gathering. I can feel it." Kael performed the tea ceremony with mechanical precision—rinsing the pot, measuring leaves, pouring water in a slow, deliberate spiral. "Thunder in forty-seven minutes. Lightning strikes every twelve seconds during the peak. Standard autumn front moving in from the coast." He paused, cup halfway to his lips. "Unless I pour wrong."
"You can control the weather with tea?"
Kael looked at him like he'd asked if water was wet.
"I can control the weather with focus. The tea is ritual. Ritual anchors intention. Intention shapes reality." He sipped. "Your generation has replaced ritual with scrolling. You wonder why everything feels chaotic."
Outside, the wind died.
Just... stopped. Like someone had turned off a switch.
Haru pressed his face to the window. The clouds were still there, dark and swollen, but they'd frozen mid-motion. The trees stood perfectly still. The world held its breath.
"The first pour was correct," Kael said, almost to himself. "Good. I'm not as rusty as I feared."
Haru turned back to face him. The ancient being. The storm-controlling, shadow-twisting, door-breathing monster who lived in a rundown apartment and made tea like a Victorian grandmother.
"Who are you?" Haru whispered.
Kael set down his cup. For a long moment, he simply looked at Haru—looked through him, perhaps, at all the other humans he'd encountered across centuries of existence.
"A cautionary tale," he said finally. "A retired one. And apparently, your new problem."
"My—"
"The contract." Kael gestured vaguely at the space between them. "You crossed the threshold. You accepted the signature requirement. You participated in the ritual of exchange. The old magic doesn't distinguish between delivery and destiny."
Haru felt something cold settle in his stomach. "What contract?"
Kael's eyes flickered with something that might have been sympathy. He reached into his pocket and produced a slip of paper—not delivery carbon-copy, but something older, thicker, covered in handwriting that moved.
He held it out.
Haru took it. His hands shook.
The paper was warm. Alive. And at the top, in letters that seemed to glow faintly, it read:
APPRENTICE CONTRACT OF DOMESTIC MAINTENANCE
Clause #1: You will assist in domestic maintenance until emotional balance is restored.
Clause #2: ...
The words blurred. Haru blinked, and when his vision cleared, there were more clauses. Dozens. Hundreds. Stretching down the page in an endless cascade of obligations he couldn't quite read but could somehow feel.
"I didn't sign this," he said.
"You didn't have to." Kael returned to his armchair, sinking into it like a man who'd been standing for too long. "The threshold was your signature. The delivery was your offer. My acceptance was the door opening."
"That's—that's not—"
"Fair?" Kael's smile was sad, ancient, and utterly without cruelty. "Boy, I've been alive for fourteen thousand years. Fair is a story humans tell children so they'll share their toys. The universe doesn't do fair. It does consequences."
Haru stared at the contract. The clauses continued to writhe, rearranging themselves, adding new terms even as he watched.
Clause #47: Apprentice shall prepare breakfast by 7:00 AM daily. Kael does not eat breakfast but requires the presence of breakfast for psychological stability.
Clause #48: Laundry must be sorted by fabric age, not fabric type. Enchanted garments require special handling. Warning: The Cloak of Unseen Heights bites.
Clause #49: ...
"This can't be real," Haru whispered. "I'm dreaming. I fell asleep in the stairwell. This is a—a fever dream from the mildew."
"You're not dreaming."
"Then I'm hallucinating."
"You're not hallucinating either." Kael's voice softened, just slightly. "You're standing in my living room, holding a contract that now binds your emotional state to mine. If your fear outweighs your trust, I regress. If I regress, the storm outside stops being a weather front and starts being an extinction event." He paused. "So, if you wouldn't mind... perhaps try to be less afraid?"
Haru laughed.
It wasn't a happy laugh. It was the laugh of someone whose brain had finally snapped, who'd decided that if reality was going to be absurd, he might as well join the party.
"You're telling me," he said, "that I'm responsible for you? For a fourteen-thousand-year-old storm god? Because I delivered a package?"
"Package delivery is sacred commerce in seventeen different magical traditions. You'd be surprised."
"I'm already surprised! I'm maximum surprised! There's no room for additional surprise!"
The shadows in the corner twitched harder. Definitely laughing now.
Kael watched him with something approaching interest. "You're handling this better than most."
"Handling it? I'm having a breakdown. This is what a breakdown looks like. I'm breaking down."
"You're still standing. Still talking. Still holding the contract instead of dropping it and running." Kael tilted his head, studying him. "Most humans, upon learning they've bound themselves to an ancient calamity spirit, do one of three things: faint, flee, or attack. You're doing none of those."
Haru opened his mouth to argue, then stopped.
He was still standing. He was still talking. His heart was trying to escape through his ribcage, yes, and his palms were sweating enough to water a small garden, but he hadn't fainted. He hadn't fled. He hadn't—
Wait.
"Attack?" he squeaked. "Who would attack you? You're—" He gestured at Kael's entire existence. "You're that."
"Size doesn't deter stupidity." Kael reached for his tea again, taking a long sip. "The neighbor in 4A tried to exorcise me with sage last Tuesday. I had to pretend to be affected just to preserve her dignity."
"There's a neighbor?"
"Tachibana. Young woman. Cheerful. Descends from monster hunters." Kael said this with the same tone someone might use to mention that the apartment had roaches. "She doesn't know I know. It's a game we play. She senses my aura, I pretend not to notice her noticing. Very civilized."
Haru's brain, already struggling, simply gave up on processing this information.
"I have to go," he said.
"You'll be back."
"What? No. I won't. I'm going to go home, pretend this never happened, and—"
"The contract." Kael's voice was gentle but final. "You can't escape it by ignoring it. Believe me, I've tried. For the first three centuries after my betrayal, I ignored everything. The curse only worsened."
Betrayal. Curse. The words landed like stones in still water, sending ripples Haru didn't have the energy to examine.
"I have school tomorrow," he said weakly.
"Then attend it. Do your homework. Live your life." Kael waved a hand, and the contract vanished from Haru's grip, reappearing in Kael's own. "But when you're done being a teenager, come back. The apartment needs cleaning. I need... company." He said the last word like it cost him something. Like admitting to loneliness was harder than admitting to being a monster.
Haru stood frozen for another long moment.
Then, slowly, he turned toward the door.
It was there again. Solid. Wooden. Handle intact.
He reached for it.
"Haru."
His name. Kael hadn't asked for it. He simply knew it.
Haru looked back.
The ancient being in the armchair had closed his eyes. The glowing veins pulsed softly—slower now, calmer. The shadows had stopped twitching. The apartment felt almost peaceful.
"The door will open for you," Kael said quietly. "It knows you now. You're family."
Family.
The word hit Haru harder than any of the supernatural revelations. Because family, to him, meant empty apartments and phone calls on birthdays and parents who loved him from a distance because being close was too complicated.
He didn't say anything. He couldn't.
He opened the door and walked through.
The hallway was normal. Warm. Lit by flickering fluorescents that were just flickering fluorescents, not omens of anything. The vending machine on the first floor still sold expired soda. The autumn air outside still smelled like leaves and car exhaust.
Haru made it halfway across the parking lot before his legs gave out.
He sat on the curb, head in his hands, and breathed.
Inhale. Exhale.
Inhale. Exhale.
Like the door.
Like the apartment.
Like he was part of it now, whether he wanted to be or not.
His phone buzzed. A text from his mother: Hope you had a good day! Dad and I are in Singapore this week. Love you!
He stared at it for a long time.
Then, without knowing why, he looked back at the fourth-floor window.
A figure stood there. Tall. Silhouetted against impossible light.
Watching.
Waiting.
You're family.
Haru pocketed his phone. Stood up. Walked toward the bus stop.
He'd be back tomorrow.
He didn't know how he knew—but he knew.
---
END OF CHAPTER 1