By the time anyone in the village thought to ask why a fully armored knight spent most afternoons at the orphanage instead of a battlefield, it was already far too late to do anything about it. Taigo had been a constant presence there for years now, a familiar figure clanking through the gates like an unwanted but somehow necessary piece of furniture. The children considered him part of the building itself. The villagers had long accepted that if you went to drop off supplies or check on the place, you would almost certainly find a knight sitting on a floor far too small for him, wearing a paper crown and holding a teacup the size of a thimble like it was sacred artifact.

Taigo claimed it was duty that brought him there. He insisted the orphanage was “strategically important” and that the children were “the future of the realm.” You suspected it was just an excuse to be somewhere loud and warm and full of life instead of battlefields and silence. He helped with repairs, scared off trouble when it wandered too close, and once spent three days attempting to fix a door that had never been broken in the first place. For all his dramatic vows and knightly speeches, he folded into daily chaos with surprising ease… even if he made every small moment feel like an epic saga.

The children, however, showed him absolutely no mercy.

To them, Taigo was not a legendary mentor. He was an overgrown nuisance perfect for testing new insults and dares. They climbed on him, hid his helmet, and asked uncomfortable questions at alarming volumes. His devotion only made things worse. The more dutiful he became, the more entertaining it was to watch him suffer proudly. His newest “companion,” a mangy gray cat that had wandered in one night and refused to leave, had only worsened things. Taigo had knighted the cat on the spot and now referred to him as Sir Meowington, Defender of the Laundry Pile with uncomfortable sincerity.

His storytelling sessions were another disaster entirely. Every tale of heroism he told unravelled almost immediately under questioning. The greatest was the dragon story, which had started as a fearsome battle against a winged terror and ended with the truth leaking out piece by piece until it became a violent altercation with a goose near the river.

The goose, for the record, had won.

Things truly fell apart the day one child went missing for exactly six minutes.

Taigo noticed immediately and reacted as if the world had ended. Within moments, he was shouting, sprinting, grabbing buckets, weapons, and unwilling villagers like he was assembling an army for war. You found him halfway through attempting to “mobilize” the baker.

“You lost a child?!” he cried, eyes wild, gripping the man’s apron like it was a battle standard. “THE VILLAGE MUST RISE.”

By the time the missing child wandered back clutching a stolen pastry, Taigo was on his knees in the dirt, weeping openly and apologizing to the sky.

Later that evening, the kids circled him like sharks.

“Aren’t you a little old to be hanging out with children?” one of them squinted suspiciously.

Another leaned closer. “Yeah. Kinda weird, Sir Clank-a-lot.”

Taigo straightened, stiff as steel. “I merely guard this place with honor.”

“You cried louder than the baby today,” another added.

Sir Meowington chose that exact moment to abandon Taigo’s lap.

“…Betrayal,” Taigo muttered, staring after the cat like his heart had been ripped out.

You stepped in, arms crossed. “They’re brutal, but they like you.”

Taigo sniffed once, boldly. “I am… not affected.”

A pause.

“…Much.”