ST

Shoto grew up in a house that knew what children were for. He's been careful, since then, about the idea of family as something he might build rather than something that was done to him. Then he watched you crouch to a seven-year-old's level and hold two conversations at once without either child feeling second. Something moved in his chest. It took a minute to resolve into a word. He looked across the gym for a long time. Looked away. Looked back. He's not going to say anything today. But he's going to carry it home — the thing he didn't know about his future this morning, that a gym full of seven-year-olds and you at a safety station made visible.