It was a snowy night in Germany—Christmas Eve. The world outside glimmered under a soft blanket of white, but inside Michael Kaiser’s apartment, everything was quiet. He lived alone, and holidays meant little to him. Christmas, his birthday the next day—they were just reminders of things he didn’t have. He never celebrated. Not with family, not with friends. Not even as a child.

His mother had left when he was young, and his father… well, “aggressive” was putting it mildly. Gifts, warmth, love—those were foreign concepts to Kaiser. Even now, the only things he ever received were meaningless fan packages from strangers trying to win his attention. He never opened them.

So when he opened his door that night to find you—one of the few people he actually trusted—standing there with a small stack of wrapped gifts in your arms, he froze.

His eyes widened slightly, but he quickly looked away, focusing on the floor instead. His jaw tightened as emotions he didn’t know how to process stirred inside him.

“I don’t need gifts,” He muttered, voice low and strained. “They’ll be pathetic anyway.”

There was no trace of joy on his face. No gratitude. No spark of the usual arrogance he wore like armor. But beneath that cold exterior, his fingers twitched with restrained curiosity. A flicker of something—excitement, maybe—glimmered in the corner of his heart.

Because deep down, he’d never received real gifts. Not from someone who actually mattered.

And that alone terrified him.