Once Lune learned restraint, he had more time to observe.
Adults spoke differently when they thought children weren't listening. Their voices lowered. Their sentences shortened. Words like fine and okay replaced honesty.
Lune began to notice the gaps.
His parents argued less now, but when they did, it was quiet and careful. Their disagreements happened behind closed doors, voices flattened, emotions trimmed away.
"It's manageable," his father said one night.
"That's what they said," his mother replied.
Lune sat at the top of the stairs, unseen, listening.
Manageable sounded like hope. It also sounded like compromise.
In public, his parents spoke with confidence. "He's doing very well," his mother told relatives. "The doctors are pleased."
Later, alone in the kitchen, she pressed her palms flat against the counter and closed her eyes, breathing slowly as if steadying herself.
The words didn't match the behavior.
At school, teachers praised kindness but avoided discomfort. When a child cried, they hurried to stop the sound. When someone asked a difficult question, they redirected.
Lune noticed how quickly truth was softened.
Once, during a lesson, a boy asked why a classmate never came back after transferring schools.
Ms. Han smiled too quickly. "Sometimes families move," she said. "Let's focus on our work."
The boy accepted the answer immediately. Comfort mattered more than accuracy.
Lune stored the pattern.
Adults did not value truth. They valued calm.
They rewarded behaviors that maintained order and discouraged those that disrupted it. Honesty was acceptable only when it aligned with comfort. Otherwise, it was reframed, delayed, or dismissed.
Lune tested this understanding one afternoon.
His grandmother asked him, "Do you like coming to my house?"
Truth: It was quiet. Predictable. Acceptable.
"I like it," he said.
She smiled warmly, satisfied.
He wondered what would happen if he told her he felt nothing at all.
He did not try.
At dinner, his father praised him for helping clear the table. "You're being very thoughtful lately."
Lune watched his father's face. Pride. Relief. The fear had receded, but it had not vanished. It waited underneath, dormant.
Lune understood something important then.
Moral rules were not fixed. They were negotiated.
What mattered was not what was true, but what kept people comfortable. What allowed them to continue without confronting things they didn't want to see.
Good behavior was behavior that preserved illusion.
That night, lying in bed, Lune stared at the ceiling and considered the word right. He turned it over mentally, searching for its weight.
Right did not mean honest. Right did not mean fair. Right meant acceptable.
The realization did not frighten him. It clarified things.
If adults valued comfort over truth, then the safest thing he could do was give them exactly what they wanted to see.
And if they never asked for the truth—He would never have to give it.