He looked around. Waited. Listened.
Nothing. No one.
He climbed down carefully, crouched beside the bundle, and looked at the face inside it.
The baby did not cry.
Which was strange. Which was, frankly, the strangest part of any of this, stranger even than the crater, stranger than the cloth, stranger than the hair color.
Newborns cried. That was what they did.
This one just looked up at him with those dark eyes like it was simply waiting to see what happened next.
The old man cradled it carefully.
"Who left you here," he said quietly, to no one.
No answer came.
He straightened up and carried the child home.
---
**Tokyo, Japan.**
Eight years later.
---
The market street was busy the way Tokyo market streets always were, packed and loud and smelling of food and exhaust and the specific energy of too many people moving in too many directions at once.
A man pulled out his wallet to pay for groceries.
A hand was faster.
