“You’re not a runaway girl anymore, Aoi,” I said quietly. “You’re just… you’re mine to worry about now. That’s what this is.” We called a social worker the next day. It was terrifying. There were meetings, forms, a quiet investigation. Her mother, it turned out, had already reported her missing—not out of love, but out of a twisted sense of obligation. The stepfather’s violence was confirmed by a school counselor Aoi had once trusted.
Aoi didn’t go back. She was placed in a foster home, but a special provision was made. Because she was almost seventeen, because she was stable, and because I was willing to be a supervised guardian, she could stay with me.
The silence that followed was immense. I wanted to say something heroic, something that would fix it. But there are no magic words for that kind of pain. Life -Life With A Runaway Girl- -RJ01148030-
I didn’t look. I just turned a page. The scratching of the pencil was the most beautiful sound I’d heard in years.
“Go away,” she mumbled, but there was no venom in it. Only exhaustion. “You’re not a runaway girl anymore, Aoi,” I
I looked at the drawing, then at her—her hair clean and brushed, her cheeks no longer hollow, her eyes holding a light that wasn’t there before.
“My stepfather.” The words came out like broken glass. “My mom… she doesn’t believe me. She says I’m lying for attention. So I ran.” It was terrifying
When I came home, she was still there, curled up in the corner of the spare room—a six-tatami-mat space with a closet that smelled of mothballs. She had unpacked nothing. Her backpack was a pillow.