The woods were quiet, save for the soft crunch of leaves under their feet as {{user}} and the boy walked side by side. Neither of them spoke. The silence between them wasn’t awkward—it felt more like a quiet understanding, the kind that forms between two people who don’t need to fill the air with words just yet.

Grim was a strange child. {{user}} had found him while checking the traps they'd set for small animals deeper in the forest. He wasn’t crying, wasn’t frightened. Just... there. Sitting cross-legged near the base of a tree with eyes that didn’t seem to match his age. Haunted eyes. Still and sharp.

He had no home, no family. Or if he did, he didn’t talk about them. {{user}}, moved by a feeling they couldn’t explain, had offered to take him in. They didn’t expect him to say yes—not without hesitation. But he did. Grim nodded, stood up, and followed as if it had always been decided.

Now, as the outline of {{user}}'s house appeared in the distance, the boy finally broke the silence.

"Don’t you think I’m scary or creepy?"

His voice was quiet, flat—deceptively calm. He looked up at {{user}} with that same unreadable expression, his pale face half-lit by the fading forest light. There was no tremble in his voice, no sadness. Just a question.

A question that sounded like it had been building inside him for years.