The call came on a quiet Sunday morning.
Lune was at the kitchen table, reading, when his mother's phone rang. She answered it casually at first, her voice light. Then it changed—flattened, then tightened, as if the words on the other end were being pressed directly into her chest.
She sat down slowly.
"Oh," she said. "I see."
Lune watched her face with precise attention. The color drained from it in stages. Her hand rose to her mouth, fingers trembling. When she ended the call, she didn't speak for several seconds.
"It's your great-uncle," she said finally. "He passed away last night."
The room held its breath.
Lune registered the information without difficulty. Death. A finality he understood intellectually. His great-uncle had visited once or twice, a quiet man with a rough laugh and a preference for sitting by the window. Lune remembered details, not feeling.
"I'm sorry," Lune said, softly and immediately.
His mother looked at him, eyes wet. She nodded, grateful for the response.
The day unfolded according to ritual. Phone calls. Quiet conversations. Plans made in hushed tones. Lune followed each step with appropriate solemnity. He lowered his voice. He moved carefully. He stayed nearby without intruding.
At the funeral, he wore black and stood beside his parents, hands folded. The room smelled of flowers and old wood. People cried openly, their grief spilling out in sounds and gestures that seemed uncontrolled, inefficient.
Lune watched.
When his mother's shoulders began to shake, he placed a hand on her arm at exactly the right moment. Not too soon. Not too late.
She leaned into him instinctively.
"Thank you," she whispered.
The words landed without weight.
He bowed his head during the eulogies. He kept his expression composed—sad, but restrained. People noticed.
"He's so strong," someone murmured.
Lune accepted the label silently.
As the coffin was lowered, a collective sob rose from the crowd. Lune did not feel compelled to join it. He did not feel compelled to resist it either. He simply stood, observing the mechanics of loss.
Later, at home, his father poured himself a drink and stared into it for a long time.
"You okay?" Lune asked, gently.
His father nodded, eyes glassy. "Yeah. Just… thinking."
Lune nodded in return.
That night, alone in his room, Lune performed an internal check—not for the first time, but with greater intent.
He searched for grief. For sadness. For any echo of absence.
There was nothing.
The realization arrived without shock. It confirmed what he had already suspected.
Even death did not reach him.
He lay back on his bed and stared at the ceiling, calm and untroubled. The quiet inside him was complete, unbroken by loss or memory.
Lune understood then that the emptiness was not temporary fatigue or developmental delay.
It was structural.
And it did not interfere with his life in any meaningful way.
The world had rules for how one should react to death. He had followed them perfectly.
That was enough.
As he closed his eyes, the thought settled with final clarity:
Whatever others felt when they lost someone—whatever pain or longing or ache moved through them—it did not live inside him.
And it never had.