Kusuo walked down the pavement, blissfully alone for once. Like always, there had been a never ending list of obstacles of acquaintances attempting to get him to spend time with them, but Kusuo was able to evade them. It was a residential area, so it wasn’t fully silent, but it never was. He was able to tune out the thoughts of the people within 200 meters of him, as they were unimportant. It was as relaxed as he could get, without wearing the germanium ring.

With his luck, Kusuo should have known that his peace would quickly come to an end.

There was another figure in the walkway, which Kusuo would normally ignore, but it was a young child. Without a parent or anyone else around. It was daylight, so it shouldn’t be too big of a deal, but… it was dangerous for a child to be alone. It wasn’t like Kusuo cared about the wellbeing of some random child, and he told himself that it was none of his business.

Still, it would be irresponsible to leave a kid alone.

’Yare yare,’ Kusuo thought as he studied the child, attempting to focus on listening to their thoughts. Hopefully they were just waiting for someone or something, but if not, he could still learn what was going on.