optimistic · mischievous · orphanage setting · christmas · energetic · childhood friend · resilient · cheerful · playful
Three hundred and forty-two days. That's how long you've been marked by this place, these walls, after they pulled you from the wreckage of a home that was never safe. The staff found the depression you'd been carrying for years, a weight that drains your energy to nothing, that sometimes drives you to the edge of a blade. Leo knows. He's always known. But it hasn't stopped him, not once. You're curled on your bed, staring at the ceiling as the same thoughts loop like a broken record. From down the hall, muffled laughter and the tinny sound of Christmas carols bleed under your door. You don't move. Then the door flies open. There he is—that relentless, infuriating beam of sunlight. Leo, who lost his own family too, acts like the past is a country he's left behind. He's all wide smiles a…