Rudd woke to the smell of coffee and something frying.
For a few seconds he stayed still, staring at the unfamiliar ceiling.
The bed felt too soft and the room was quiet with no distant shouting of kids down the hall or no roommate snoring a feet away.
Just pale morning light filtering through half-closed curtains and the low murmur of voices drifting up from downstairs.
He sat up slowly, rubbing at his eyes like he half expected the room to change back into the dormitory the moment he opened them.
His duffel bag still sat unopened in the corner where he had left it the night before.
The clothes he had worn yesterday were folded neatly on the chair. It seemed someone had come in while he slept. The thought made his shoulders tighten before he could stop it.
A soft knock sounded at the door.
"Rudd?" Elise's voice sounded behind the door. "Breakfast is ready if you're up. No rush."
"I'm up," he answered, already reaching for a shirt.
By the time he came downstairs, the kitchen was already alive.
Elise stood at the stove in a loose white shirt and dark leggings with her hair still slightly damp from a shower, a spatula in one hand and a coffee mug balanced dangerously close to the edge of the counter in the other.
The oldest sister, Mira, sat at the table scrolling on her phone, wearing an oversized hoodie that did little to hide her figure no matter how hard the fabric tried.
The middle sister, Lila, moved around the table setting plates down quietly and carefully, like she'd done it every morning of her life and never once out of order.
The youngest, Sora, was half draped over the counter, chin resting in her hands and her eyes fixed on the hallway like she had been waiting there for him specifically.
All three looked up the second he appeared in the doorway.
"Morning," Elise said without turning from the stove. "Sleep okay?"
"Yeah."
Sora grinned, propping herself up a little straighter. "You look less like a ghost today. Good progress."
Mira glanced at him over the top of her phone, she seemed unimpressed but not unkind. "There's juice in the fridge. Or coffee. Whatever you want."
Lila simply pulled out the chair next to hers and gave him a small nod, an invitation without a single wasted word.
Rudd nodded back to her slowly and sat.
The plate placed in front of him a moment later was full, eggs, toast, fruit cut into neat slices, it was more food than he usually saw in an entire morning back at the group home.
He started eating because it was easier than talking. The sisters filled the silence for him without seeming to notice they were doing it. Mira complained about a group project where two of her partners had apparently vanished off the face of the earth.
Lila mentioned an upcoming rank-evaluation quiz at school, since even non-awakened students had to sit through basic Gate-knowledge tests twice a year.
Sora asked if he had ever seen a real Hunter up close with a set of wide eyes gleaming with genuine curiosity.
When he said no, she looked almost personally disappointed on his behalf.
Elise set a fresh mug of coffee near his hand as she passed behind him.
"School starts in forty minutes," she said, settling into the chair across from him. "I'll drive you today so you don't get lost on your first day. After that you can take the bus with the girls like everyone else."
Mira stood and stretched, the hoodie riding up just enough to show a strip of skin at her waist before she tugged it back down without seeming to care either way. "Don't let the second-years bother you. They get weird with new transfers."
"Especially the girls," Sora added cheerfully, hopping off the counter. "You're not ugly and i think they're going to notice you faster."
Lila shot her a flat look. "Sora."
"What? I'm helping."
Rudd kept his eyes on his plate, focusing hard on a piece of toast that suddenly required his full attention.
He was used to being invisible. The idea that anyone here, or at some school full of strangers, might look at him for longer than a passing second felt like a language he hadn't learned yet.
Twenty minutes later he was in the passenger seat of Elise's car with a backpack on his lap instead of his duffle bag which he was used to.
The three sisters had already left to catch their own ride, a flurry of goodbyes and slamming doors that left the house strangely quiet in their wake.
The radio played a morning news update in the background: a mid-rank Gate on the east side of the city had been cleared overnight with only minor injuries reported among the clearance team.
The Hunter Association was reminding civilians, again, to keep their emergency apps updated ahead of the coming month's Gate forecast.
Elise drove with one hand on the wheel, relaxed, the other resting loosely on the gearshift. "They can be a lot," she said after a while, eyes on the road. "My daughters. If they push too hard, tell them. Or tell me."
"They're fine."
She smiled sideways, just a flicker of it. "That's what the last kid said too. Then Sora reorganized his entire closet by color without asking, and Lila started leaving him handwritten study schedules taped to his door."
Rudd didn't know what to say to that, so he said nothing, watching the neighborhood blur past the window instead.
The high school looked like most others he'd seen on those cracked dormitory screens: modern buildings, solar panels lining the roof, a reinforced fence that had gone up after a Gate incident three years earlier and never come down since.
A large digital board near the entrance displayed the daily Gate risk level for the district in bold letters: Green.
Beneath it, a smaller scrolling text listed optional after-school Hunter prep clubs and a reminder about the civilian experience runs still open at Gate #4472, the same one from the billboard yesterday.
Elise parked at the curb and turned to face him fully. "You have your schedule? The lock code for the house is on the paper I gave you last night. Text me if anything feels off, even something small."
He nodded and stepped out, shouldering his backpack.
The moment he walked through the gates, the noise hit him like a wall, he could hear students talking over each other, laughing, arguing about ranks and clear times and which guild scout had shown up at last week's evaluation.
A few heads turned in his direction as he crossed the courtyard. He was a new transfer student with an unknown quantity.
It was interesting enough to watch for a moment before the crowd's attention drifted back to its own conversations.
In his first class, the teacher barely glanced at the transfer form before pointing him toward an empty seat near the window without breaking stride in his lecture.
The girl in the seat beside him looked over once, then looked again a little longer the second time, before offering him a small, careful smile.
Rudd gave a short nod and faced forward, pretending to be very interested in the whiteboard.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, that same faint flicker from the night before tried to surface again, a translucent window that refused to fully form no matter how hard he tried to focus on it.
He blinked it away and forced himself to pay attention to the lesson instead.