In the morning of the next day, the children gathered in the spacious living room with its high windows, sitting on comfortable couches with papers in their hands, while Kyo stood before them. Behind him was a small board on which was written in clear handwriting:
"Rules of the Orphanage"
1. No leaving the premises under any circumstances.
2. If the first rule is revoked, I am currently working on this: each individual lives under a new identity outside. No one is allowed to reveal their real name to anyone.
3. Whoever breaks the rules bears the consequences alone.
4. Everyone is treated equally—no princes, no slaves here.
5. Whoever needs something, asks for it. Whoever feels danger, speaks up.
6. Kyo is responsible for your safety... but do not ask him about his past.
Kyo set the pen aside and turned to them:
"You are free... but under these rules. This world will not show you mercy if it learns you are alive. Here, you are safe. But if you leave... I cannot save you."
Silence prevailed.
Hans was the first to draw attention...
His crimson-red hair was like a living flame, falling strangely across his forehead as if it had never submitted to a comb.
His dark green eyes swirled with something like anger... or wounded pride.
Every step he took carried defiance, as if he were fighting the air itself to prove he wasn't just a number.
He burst out sarcastically:
"Ah, rules?! Is this a prison or a shelter? Why must we live in hiding? Who gave you the right to decide?!"
He threw a chair aside and stormed out angrily, but the door didn't open. The air barrier prevented his escape. He returned resentfully, sweat dripping from his forehead, glaring at Kyo with anger, then sat down without uttering a word.
Clarence remained silent, staring at Kyo with narrowed eyes, scrutinizing every movement, as if watching an enemy he didn't trust. Then he said:
"Are you deceiving us or trying to atone for your guilt? I haven't figured it out yet."
With his calm coolness, he seemed like a statue of ivory.
His golden hair was soft, almost shimmering under the light, and his pale blue eyes were like a cloudless sky, revealing nothing.
His gaze didn't follow those around him; it anticipated them.
Eugene suddenly raised his hand:
"Is there an electronics workshop? I want to build some things. I don't mind the rules as long as no one interferes with my projects."
Kyo smiled: "In the basement, you'll find all the tools."
Eugene was like a quiet shadow in the corner, his presence never loud. His pale blue hair was the color of the sea on a cloudy morning, always seeming as if he had descended from another sky. His glasses often slipped down his nose, but he only adjusted them with a slow motion, as if unwilling to disturb the air around him.
His eyes were gray, neither cold nor warm, standing in a gray area of emotions, as if he observed life as a complex mathematical equation.
Austin...
His thick black hair was as if night had dyed his entire head.
His eyes were black, deep, not shining like the others', but absorbing light.
He was silent most of the time, but his presence alone... was enough to make everyone feel safe, or guilty.
He didn't say anything, but sat by the window, writing in a small notebook. Only Kyo noticed the faint smile that formed on his lips.
Rain and Rini, the contrasting twins...
Rain, with his mint-green hair and bright emerald-like eyes, preferred to sit, contemplate, then smile suddenly for no reason.
Rini, in contrast, with her calm blue hair and sky-colored eyes, always ran before thinking.
They were inseparable, as if breaking one would shatter the other.
The younger twins just played with the toys placed for them, still unaware of the magnitude of what was happening.
Leonardo sat cross-legged in front of Kyo and said in a low voice: "I trust you. Just... don't abandon us."
He was like the forest itself.
His hair, gradating between dark green and gray, looked as if it had grown from the earth rather than his head.
His blue eyes were cold as the sea, hiding depth beneath their calm surface.
There was something childlike about him, yet he fought to be everyone's warm shelter.
He was as calm as the sea in a moment of serenity.
His voice was soft, his steps light, but he possessed a hidden determination that no one saw except those who truly drew close.
He wasn't the smartest, nor the strongest, but he was the most steadfast in the storm. When he told Kyo, "I trust you. Just... don't abandon us," it wasn't just a passing sentence... but a sincere promise that he would stay as long as this place stood.
Emma sat reading, but she was watching everyone.
Her thick yellow hair surrounded her face like golden light, while her pink eyes flickered with an unspoken childish anxiety.
She didn't trust easily, but when she smiled... it was as if spring had entered the place.
She looked around, then at Kyo: "Will we go to school? Will we celebrate holidays? Is this truly a home or just a shell?"
Kyo answered calmly: "This house will be warmer than any palace. And you won't just be numbers in someone's ledger. You will live... as children should."
---
In the following days, a routine began to settle.
Breakfast was served daily at eight in the morning, by Kyo's hands—he who cooked strangely well for someone with his supposed past.
Time for study, for play, and for crafts.
Kyo went out often, but always returned loaded with books, supplies, or stories he never told.
Their relationships developed... but suspicion still loomed.
The first night was the quietest... and the heaviest.
Inside, unspoken words accumulated. Outside, the wind battered the windows as if trying to remind them that the world was still out there, waiting.
In the morning, the window in Hans's room was found broken. He hadn't tried to escape; he had simply written on the glass:
"I trust no one. But I will pretend."
As for Clarence, he spent the night on the floor, watching the door without blinking. In the morning, he asked Kyo a simple question:
"Is there poisoned food here? Just tell me and I'll get used to it."
Kyo laughed, despite the pain he felt inside:
"Not here, Clarence. Here, only bitter coffee."
Emma, meanwhile, wrote a list of holidays she had never celebrated and put it on the refrigerator.
"We won't postpone any holiday, even if I have to invent them," she said with a faint smile, hiding the tremor in her heart.
Eugene began collecting scrap and opened the workshop. Within days, he hung a sign above the door that read:
"The Asylum Lab - No Entry Without Permission or Apple Pie."
Rain and Rini, the twins, started following Kyo wherever he went. They were too young to harbor suspicion, but old enough to sense that this man, despite his calm, carried a storm in his chest.
Twins, yet they were not alike.
Rain, with hair green like new leaves, was the calmest, observing more than talking, listening as if the whole world were a secret he didn't want to miss.
Rini, with mischievous blue hair like ocean waves, was loud, loved to run, asked "why?" a hundred times a day.
They were the luminous spirit of this place, filling the void with laughter, reminding everyone that purity could survive, even after bloodshed.
Austin remained silent. He wrote often, observed more. But one night, after Kyo had turned off the lights, he heard his quiet voice say:
"I believe evil people aren't born, but made. And I... don't want to become like my father."
Everything about him was black—his hair, his eyes, his clothes, even his presence. But the blackness wasn't darkness; it was silence. A boy with no power, no notable talent, in a world that showed no mercy to the weak. He had suffered bullying in the palace, from looks of pity or mockery.
But he never retaliated. Never cried in front of them. He kept everything inside, as if his silence was his only shell. Only Kyo saw him... not as a failure, but as an ember waiting for a spark.
Kyo paused, didn't reply, just sat beside him in the darkness and placed his hand on his shoulder.
---
One afternoon during lunch, a fierce argument erupted between Hans and Eugene.
Hans threw his plate and said:
"We're imprisoned, and you're acting like we're on a picnic! The day will come when all this is discovered, and we'll all be killed. Eugene, stop playing with wires and make a bomb."
His crimson-red hair always seemed as if lit by an unquenchable fire, as if anger itself had taken a head and form. His dark green eyes were like a dense forest on a rainy night. He laughed loudly, shouted, protested, kicked walls if he didn't like something, as if his heart refused discipline no matter how they tried to train him.
But he wasn't evil... just hungry for justice in his own way, a child who had swallowed too much oppression, so he no longer trusted except through shouting.
Eugene looked at him for a long moment, then replied:
"I make things that illuminate, not destroy. If you're looking for death... seek it alone."
Tension filled the room.
But Emma clapped loudly and said: "Alright! Everyone be quiet. Whoever wants vanilla pudding, raise your hand?"
Silence. Then Rini and Rain raised their hands enthusiastically, followed by Eugene, and even Clarence.
Hans didn't raise his hand, but he didn't leave the table either.
---
One night, the children gathered in the living room, sitting in a circle at Emma's suggestion.
"Each of us tells the biggest lie they've ever told," she said.
Clarence: "I told my brother that my mother died of illness, while I knew my father killed her."
Eugene: "I said I didn't miss anyone, while I cried every night."
Emma: "I said I didn't like holidays... because no one ever remembered me on them."
Hans didn't say anything; he just stood up, pulled out a torn photo of a child who looked exactly like him, and said: "I'm not Hans."
And he left.
Kyo heard everything, from behind the door.
He didn't intervene, just smiled... the smile of a man who understands that children, when given safety, will speak.
---
At the end of the first week, a paper appeared hanging on the kitchen door:
"The Charter of Kyo's Orphanage"
1. No one is alone here.
2. Whoever cries, we listen.
3. Whoever yearns, is embraced.
4. Whoever is angry, is understood.
5. Whoever cooks, does not clean.
6. Whoever remembers the world... does not tell the others.
7. And whoever dreams... is protected.
No one knew who wrote it.
Perhaps Emma, perhaps Austin... perhaps Kyo himself.
But he didn't sign it.
Because no one signs a dream.
---
In every tense moment, Hans was the first to explode. He trusted no one, smiled at no one, slept with his eyes open like a wild animal returning from the hunt.
Kyo noticed this. He didn't confront him, didn't scold him, just started leaving him small notes written in neat handwriting, placing them on his table or under his pillow.
"Try asking instead of shouting."
"Isolation isn't courage."
"I won't stop you if you decide to run away... but I'll be sad."
At first, Hans tore them up. Then he started reading them... silently.
And one night, when Kyo returned exhausted from some mission, he found a carefully folded note on his desk:
"I don't trust you, but I see you. And for now, that's enough."
H.
Kyo didn't smile... but he kept it in his inner pocket, closer than his heart.
---
Emma was like a little sun trying to deny that she was burning.
Her yellow hair always sparkled like mischievous sunrays, and her pink eyes were the color of flowers she had never found in the palace. She asked a lot, laughed, cried, got angry... everything about her was life. But behind that vitality, she knew well that the world wasn't a fair place. She wanted a real home, holidays, school, dancing in winter under the snow, no plans and no secrets... just childhood as it should be.
She was the one who arranged the flowers in the windows. She was the one who made a birthday cake for Rini even though they didn't know his birth date.
But behind every action... was a tremor.
One day, she found Kyo in the kitchen, making coffee late at night. She sat before him silently, then asked:
"Did you ever dream of being treated as a child... even for one day?"
Kyo didn't answer immediately. He just placed a cup of warm milk before her.
Then he said:
"I never dared to dream of that."
She looked at him for a long moment, then whispered:
"I want to believe that you're protecting us... not because you regretted, but because you believe we deserve a chance."
He nodded his head and said simply:
"Both are true, Emma."
From that night on, Emma began writing her diary and leaving it on the kitchen table, not asking Kyo to read it... but she knew he did.
---
Rain—the younger twin—seemed to live in a fantasy world, running, playing, laughing loudly...
But Kyo noticed something in his eyes that didn't match his age.
One day, while Kyo was fixing a toy box, Rain approached him and suddenly asked:
"Kyo? Am I dead?"
His hand froze for a moment.
"Why do you ask?"
The child replied with strange calmness:
"Because in dreams... no one feels pain. And I haven't felt anything since I came here. That means I'm dead, right?"
Kyo put the screwdriver aside and sat on the floor facing him.
"No, Rain. You're not dead... but your spirit is acting as if it's been deeply wounded, afraid to feel again."
"Do spirits heal?"
"If placed in gentle hands... yes, they heal."
Rain didn't say anything. Just approached him and suddenly hugged him.
"Then... be kind to me, and don't leave me."
---
"Children who don't resemble children... and I am a man who doesn't resemble adults. In each of them, I see a part of myself: the anger, the fear, the pretense of strength, the longing for things I never experienced. I don't want to be a hero... I just want to be for them the person I never found when I was their age."
— Kyo
---
Austin was always quiet. He didn't shout, didn't complain, didn't ask much.
He sat by the window after breakfast, same spot, same notebook, writing every morning. He didn't join the others in play, didn't enter Eugene's workshop, and didn't argue with Hans.
But one evening, Kyo entered the room and found the notebook open to a page where he had written:
"I have nothing, no power, no place, even words are unheard when they leave my mouth. I'm not really here. Just a shadow sitting quietly so I'm not expelled."
Kyo didn't say anything then. He just closed the notebook and returned it to its place.
The next day, he brought from outside a small bag containing a Phoenix feather—rare and precious, used for making enchanted pens and symbols.
"Austin, come with me to the back shed."
Austin didn't speak. He followed him silently.
There, Kyo set up a wooden table, with engraving tools, colors, and some old books.
"These aren't magical powers, but they are real tools. If you weren't born with a talent, you can still make your own talent."
Austin looked at him, then at the tools.
"And where will I use them? In a world that slaps you whenever you dare to be ordinary?"
Kyo smiled, that smile that carried more weariness than hope.
"In my world... a shadow can become a cornerstone. Believe me, nothing is more fearsome than someone who survived being forgotten."
After a week, the children began noticing small drawings appearing on the walls, on cups, even on their shirts... subtle signatures, fantasy shapes, all drawn with fine artistic lines.
"Who did this?" asked Rini.
Emma laughed: "Austin, of course."
And for the first time, Austin was seen laughing. Lightly... but genuinely.
In his notebook, he later wrote:
"Kyo didn't try to give me power... but gave me meaning."
---
"Sometimes, the hardest battles are those no one notices. To be without talent in a world that despises the weak is like breathing in a world without air. But Austin... wasn't weak, just invisible. And I know all too well how that slowly tears you apart."
— Kyo
---
Eugene was like the machine he made: precise, silent, disliked surprises. He hated chaos and avoided discussions. If he wasn't in his workshop, he was sleeping or reading in a distant corner.
Eugene was like a shadow passing in the background, not causing a stir, but those who overlooked him missed a lot.
His light blue hair fell gracefully across his forehead, sometimes hiding the edge of his straight, thin-rimmed glasses. His eyes were gray, pale like the clouds of a coastal city, showing neither anger nor joy, but that strange calm that made others pause for seconds when they met his gaze.
He spoke little, focused much. He didn't care who was a prince or a slave, only cared about what he could disassemble, fix, or reinvent. His hands were always busy with wires, chips, and strange tools no one else understood.
In the orphanage, he wasn't looking for friends, but he didn't reject them. Whenever someone approached him, he didn't push them away, but let them stay if they could endure the long silence.
He believed that logic alone wasn't enough, so he always wrote his thoughts in small notebooks, testing, modifying... then fell silent again.
He didn't talk much, but he knew all the details—how many hits Hans took in training, what page Emma stopped on in her book, even how many candies Rain had hidden under his pillow.
His mind was a machine that never stopped, his mind was like a laboratory he inhabited alone. Because no one had ever needed a boy who thought more than he spoke, he grew accustomed to solitude, then learned to make it his home.
He was Eugene... a genius who didn't seek glory, but meaning in a world where laws had collapsed.
Once, he suddenly exploded when Rini and Rain entered his workshop playing:
"Don't touch anything! These are delicate tools! If you break them, they'll never be fixed!"
The twins ran away crying, while Eugene breathed rapidly as if the world had closed in.
Kyo entered after minutes.
"Eugene... what happened?"
"They... messed with my project! I was about to complete the robotic arm! If they touched the power unit, everything would explode!"
"You know, you're not the only one who exploded, they did too..."
Kyo sat beside him.
"Do you know why you love controlling everything? Because you're afraid no one will see you if you don't impress them. Because when you were there... in the palace, they didn't care about your intelligence, they just said: why don't you have a fire or mental power? What's the use of electronics?"
Eugene stared at him, astonished. He had never told anyone that.
"But here... you won't need to prove anything. You're already important. Genius doesn't need a certificate, just space."
The next morning, Kyo found a small device beside his bed. When he pressed the button, a phrase lit up on the wall:
"Kyo... don't extinguish the spark that saved me."
Signed: Eugene.
And in the children's room, Eugene invited the twins to see his new project: a small cart moved by sound signals.
Rini laughed: "Can we drive it?"
Eugene replied:
"It will drive you!"
---
Excerpt from Kyo's notebook (not disclosed to the children)
"Genius without love... becomes a burden. That's why Eugene needs not only tools, but unconditional laughter, and randomness that won't be destroyed if he makes a mistake. This orphanage... is not a place to escape. It's a second birth."
---
Clarence always sat by the window, same seat, same book, but no one knew if he was actually reading.
Born with soft golden hair as if the sun itself had forged it, and pale blue eyes, with a clarity that reminded of water before being touched. But don't be fooled by his appearance; the mind residing behind that clarity was smarter than a child should be. He saw the whole world as a chessboard, boring. The nobles? Clowns chasing corrupt power. Life? A repetitive game. Boredom gnawed at him until the kidnapping... and for the first time, he didn't feel bored. He felt alive.
In the imperial palace, they said of him:
"That boy is strange... he only speaks to insult. He doesn't share, doesn't bow, doesn't get angry."
But the truth?
Clarence wasn't arrogant... but exhausted from repetition.
"Everything repeats... nobles lie, teachers flatter, children compete over nothing, and adults applaud weakness as long as it's covered in gold."
And when he was kidnapped with the other children, in one moment, the pattern shattered.
He wasn't afraid.
But felt something he had never known before: curiosity.
His first conversation with Kyo was direct and honest:
"Why did you do this?"
"Save you?"
"No, deceive the whole world to hide children... everything about you says you're not stupid, so why act like romantic heroes? No one in this world does good for free."
Kyo smiled:
"Who said I'm doing this for free?"
"What's the price then?"
"That none of you becomes like me."
Clarence was silent for seconds, then looked at him with cold gray eyes:
"I thought I understood people. But you... you're like a page that, every time I read it, a new line appears beneath."
Clarence quotes:
"In this place, no one tries to draw attention. No one competes for positions. The games are simple. The questions are honest. Rini cried because she lost at cards. Emma got angry because Kyo forgot to add cinnamon. Even Eugene started participating. What is this beautiful chaos?"
"For the first time, I'm not bored. And that's... scary."
A small scene:
One night, Kyo noticed that Clarence had placed a chess set in the middle of the living room, with a note written:
"Whoever beats me, I'll make them dessert myself. But whoever loses... has to smile."
The children gathered around the board, laughed, tried, lost.
At the end of the week, Clarence was distributing candy with his usual cold face... but his fingers trembled.
Austin said quietly: "Look... Clarence is smiling!"
Clarence replied without turning: "That's just a muscle twitch."
But everyone saw the truth.
That night, everyone slept. Some reassured, some suspicious, and others... just tired.
Outside, the first raindrops began to fall.
As for Kyo, he remained sitting in the kitchen, a cup of tea cooling between his hands, his eyes fixed on the small screen before him... where the names of those who had escaped from the royal family were listed, their ages, and the phrases stamped on their files:
"Potential threat." "Elimination deemed necessary before maturity."
He turned off the screen quietly.
They don't yet know the full truth.
But until that day comes... this place will remain a home.
A home they cannot leave,
Because if they leave... there will be no other place for them to return to.
Life is sweet like that, but why haven't you ever thought about where the money comes from? Isn't Kyo currently a dead person?