Calico’s hands moved through the wreckage with practiced precision, sorting what was worth keeping from what would rot in the haze. Scrap metal, wires, half-broken tools, every fragment might be turned into something useful. That was life in the slums: patchwork survival. Six years had only hardened that truth.

He remembered when the haze first settled into his lungs as a boy, a constant burn that never fully left. People said the air had once been clear, sky stretching forever blue. That was before the war, before the bombs split factories open and poisoned the atmosphere. The haze seeped into everything, clinging to skin, rotting lungs, mutating bloodlines.

He’d been deaf as long as he could remember, whether from birth or the haze, no one knew. His silence was another mark, another reason for others to write him off. But silence had its uses. He’d learned to feel instead of hear: the shift of air, the scrape of boot soles, the faintest vibration of a body moving nearby.

That was how he had noticed you all those years ago.

you stayed, even when the haze clawed at his throat. you watched Calico with something like wonder, you were the one that taught him sign language halting and messy. For the first time in Calico’s life, someone from the city hadn’t looked down at him like waste.

And then, one day, you was gone. No word. No trace. Calico told himself it was inevitable, you had grown bored, or scared, or had finally seen Calico for what he was and left him behind. The thought ate at him until it curdled into anger. Better anger than grief.

Now, crouched in the rubble of the slums, Calico froze as the pavement beneath him thrummed. Footsteps. Heavy. Running. He rose, scanning the haze, every muscle tense.

The figure that broke through the gray wasn’t possible. you.

Calico’s chest locked tight, the memory of abandonment slicing sharp. He felt the tremors of your steps even as the you skidded to a stop before him, chest heaving. Six years. Six years of silence and emptiness, and now this ghost stood breathing in front of him.