Lune did not remember most of his childhood in sequence.
The memories existed as fragments—isolated moments detached from feeling. A playground fence. A hospital hallway. A refrigerator chart filled with stars. None of them carried weight.
But there was one moment he remembered clearly.
It came late, near the end.
He was standing at the bus stop on an overcast morning, backpack slung over one shoulder. The street was quiet, the air cool and damp. Across the road, a child he didn't know was crying—loud, unrestrained, face red with distress.
A woman knelt in front of the child, speaking urgently, her hands fluttering uselessly.
Lune watched.
The scene unfolded exactly as it always did. The crying escalated, then peaked, then softened as the woman adjusted her approach. Eventually, the child quieted, hiccupping breaths replacing sobs.
Order restored. Lune felt nothing.
But as the bus approached, its engine humming low and steady, something else registered—not emotion, not curiosity, but closure.
He understood then that he would never be that child.
He would never cry without purpose. Never lose control in a way that required rescue. Never depend on someone else to regulate him.
That version of childhood—the chaotic, uncontained one—was not his.
The bus doors opened with a mechanical sigh. Lune stepped inside, tapping his card, moving automatically to an empty seat. He looked out the window as the bus pulled away, the crying child shrinking into the distance.
The image lodged itself in his mind, not as trauma, but as punctuation.
This was the last thing he would carry with him.
Later that year, as graduation approached, teachers spoke of endings with forced nostalgia. Students cried over lockers, took photos, promised to stay in touch.
Lune participated as required. He smiled for pictures. He signed yearbooks with neat, inoffensive messages.
Good luck.
Stay in touch.
Don't forget us.
He meant none of it. He did not need to.
On the final day, he walked out of the school without looking back. There was no sense of loss, no swelling anticipation. Just a clean break, efficient and final.
That night, he packed away the last remnants of his childhood—old notebooks, unused awards, forgotten toys. He did not linger over them.
They had served their purpose.
Standing in his room afterward, surrounded by bare walls and quiet certainty, Lune acknowledged the transition without ceremony.
Childhood was not something he mourned. It was something he completed. As he turned off the light and lay down, the future did not feel vast or intimidating.
It felt orderly.
Adulthood awaited—not as a mystery, but as a larger stage.
And Lune was ready to step onto it, carrying nothing from the past except the skills that had shaped him into exactly what the world expected to see.