At six-thirty in the evening, Chloe was walking through the forest and wondering how exactly her life had ended up here.
Twenty-seven years old. Scratched by a cat. Underpaid. And somehow still taking the long way home because the main road felt too depressing today.
She glanced down at the red mark on her forearm and sighed.
The cat had been old, ill-tempered, and in desperate need of a good brushing. Chloe had helped anyway, because that was the sort of person she was. Unfortunately, the cat had not found this arrangement moving.
"Why has my life come to this...?"
No answer came. Just the hush of evening wind through the leaves and the crunch of dirt beneath her shoes.
She used to be a medical student with a proper plan. Move to Japan, become a doctor, make her relatives proud. Then she realised she liked animals more than people and threw that plan out the window. It had felt meaningful at the time. Now it mostly felt like a series of long shifts and quiet evenings in an empty apartment.
She knew she was being dramatic. Japan was fine. She liked the order, the quiet, the way people minded their own business. Still, something was missing.
Or rather,
someone
.
Romance!
she thought bitterly. That was the missing piece. Not necessarily anything...
toe clenching
. She would have settled for the kind of gentle, heart-fluttering love story that seemed to happen so effortlessly in the novels she read before bed.
One could only dream, apparently.
Her gaze drifted off the path... and stopped.
A little way into the trees, in a clearing washed gold by the sinking sun, two children sat among a bed of flowers.
A boy and a girl.
Chloe just stared for a second.
They looked… off. Not in a bad way. More like they were too still, too composed, like someone had placed them there on purpose. Even the sunlight seemed to be cooperating, gathering around them like the forest itself had decided they were worth showing off.
The animals agreed too.
A deer stood nearby. Birds sat on the branches. A squirrel watched from the grass. None of them moved.
Chloe frowned. "...That's weird."
Kids in the woods happened. Kids in the woods with a whole silent audience of animals was something else entirely.
She should have kept walking. This looked like the kind of situation where the sensible choice was to mind your own business and go home.
And yet... "A place like this isn't where kids should be playing," she muttered. "If I ignore it and something happens, I'll feel guilty for the rest of my life!"
A noble decision.
Chloe stepped off the path and approached the clearing. "Hey, are you-"
Every animal scattered at once.
Birds fled into the air from the branches, the squirrel vanished into the undergrowth and the deer leapt back into the trees in a blur of movement.
She stopped short.
Ouch. Rude. Way to make a girl feel uninvited.
Don't they recognise an animal expert when they see one?
The boy turned his head toward her.
He looked about seven years old, maybe younger. Long black hair, hazel-brown eyes, and skin so clear and pale it almost seemed to hold the last of the evening light.
He didn't look frightened. Instead, mildly curious.
Chloe's irritation vanished instantly.
The girl beside him, however... gone.
Chloe stared at the patch of flowers where the girl had been sitting only a moment ago.
There was no movement in the grass, no dent in the flower bed where she had sat. No sign anyone had ever been there at all, actually.
Her mouth fell open slightly. "...What the?"
That wasn’t right. She was pretty sure children didn’t just vanish into thin air. She was also pretty sure hallucinating one in broad daylight wasn’t a good sign.
The boy kept watching her.
"...Right," Chloe said, deciding not to unpack whatever that was. "Let's start simple. Are you lost?"
He tilted his head. "Lost?"
His voice was soft, careful, as though he was repeating a concept he had only just heard.
Chloe crouched to his level. "...Your parents, are they nearby?"
The boy shook his head.
"I don't have any."
Chloe paused.
Well, that wasn't the answer she was expecting, and the matter-of-fact way he said it made it worse.
She studied him more carefully. He was clean, healthy, and dressed too neatly to resemble a neglected child wandering alone through the woods. Nothing about him fit together.
"Okay..." she said gently. "Then is there someone taking care of you? Like a guardian of sorts!"
Another small shake of the head.
Right. Of course.
A growing sense of unease veiled over Chloe.
"Goodness me," she murmured in English.
The boy's gaze sharpened slightly at the unfamiliar language, but he said nothing.
"W-what about your name?" she asked. "You
do
have a name, right?"
He hesitated.
"A... name?"
Chloe stared at him. That pretty much answered that question.
"A name," she said carefully, "is what people call you. Mine is
Chloe
. So... what do people call you?"
The boy was quiet for a few seconds, then gave a faint shake of his head.
The forest seemed colder all of a sudden.
Chloe looked at him, really looked at him, and whatever common sense she still possessed began losing ground to concern. She couldn't leave him here.
Leaving him here felt wrong. Taking him with her however, also felt like the start of a very complicated life-long problem.
But what was the alternative? Walk away and pretend she had seen nothing?
Chloe sighed and pushed herself up.
"Alright," she said, tone brisk, "I can't leave you out here by yourself. So, wanna come with me?"
The boy answered without hesitation. "Okay."
Chloe blinked.
"That's it? Just 'okay'?" She asked, tilting her head. "No basic self-preservation instincts at all...? You can't just agree to go home with a random stranger."
The boy looked confused, and reasonably so, considering she had invited him and then immediately scolded him for accepting.
Chloe pressed a hand to her forehead. "Right... just forget it."
She lowered her hand and offered him the other.
"Come on. I'll figure something out."
This time he hesitated.
Then, slowly, he placed his hand in hers.
It was warm.
Smaller than she expected.
"Okay," he said again, more quietly.
For some reason, that simple trust hit harder the second time.
Chloe gave his hand a gentle squeeze and started leading him back toward the path, trying not to think too far ahead. She didn't really have any plans, but she was prepared to face all of the problems head on.
Halfway back, a thought struck her.
"Oh, Right! If you don't have a name, that's gonna be a problem."
The boy looked up at her.
She smiled, a little awkwardly, "...Would... you like me to give you one...?"
For a long moment, he considered it with a solemn seriousness, then finally nodded.
Chloe felt absurdly nervous all of a sudden.
For years, in idle moments she would never admit out loud, she had kept two names tucked away in her heart. Names for children she did not have, attached to futures that had never arrived.
One for a boy.
One for a girl.
She looked down at him and said, "How does Asura sound?"
"Asura..." He repeated, testing the name on his tongue.
Then, for the first time, he smiled.
It was small. Gentle. Real enough to make the evening seem brighter.
"Yes," he said. "I like it."
Chloe smiled back before she could stop herself.
Somewhere above them, the leaves stirred in the wind.
And just like that, without fanfare or warning, Chloe's life changed.