The Child Nobody Came For

At sixteen, Nirei's life looks nothing like the one he once imagined for himself. Hayato Suo is gone. The questions he left behind remain unanswered, and the message Nirei once sent him was never returned.

But Nirei has Haruto now.

Five months old, endlessly curious, stubborn about socks, and born with one brown eye and one unmistakable ruby-red one, Haruto has quietly become the center of Nirei's world. Between sleepless nights, Sakura's constant presence, worried phone calls from his parents, and the ordinary chaos of raising a baby while still being a teenager himself, Nirei has begun building a life around everything that stayed instead of everything that left.

For the first time in a long while, that life feels almost ordinary. And Nirei has learned enough about ordinary things to know how easily they can change.