[KHR] Becoming Primo's Son

Chapter 2: Instincts

Giotto honestly didn't know what he expected. He already hated that the King gave him the title and territory of a Count, but managing this much territory was a chore he never expected to deal with.

Three orphanages in and he wanted to burn down the entire system and build it up again from the ground up. And that's a Daemon type of plan, Giotto would never usually have that as his first option! He swears! He's just exhausted, okay?

"Those three were among the ones with better reports," Damiano enlightens him as they headed to orphanage #4 in their carriage.

Giotto was ready to jump out of this carriage and walk back to the mansion on his own, assassins and bandits be damned.

"Damn this country. I told your Royal Highness I'd shut up about the mafiosi activity and won't ask for repayment but noooo," Giotto moaned into his arms, trying to deny the reality of every issue cropping up in several territories right now, "he has to give me an title and now I'm dealing with all the issues he started! Ugh!"

"Count Vongola, you'll get tried for treason."

"Dami?"

"Yes, my lord?"

"You know I love you, right?"

"I'm afraid."

"Please tell no one what you heard in here. Can I have some coffee?"

"If you'd spare my life, I suppose I must," Damiano sighed, moving to the side of the carriage where the coffee pot and cups had already been prepared in a briefcase. "If I may speak to myself? I'd love it if you would work a little more and complain a little less."

To which Giotto mutters sourly, "I'd also love it if you would keep your opinions to yourself."

Damiano sighed deeply again.

-

It was the tenth orphanage that Giotto decided he'll have Damiano meet all the children instead.

He was tired of it all— he would go crazy if he had to stay any longer.

Don't get him wrong, he adored kids, and he loved to babysit and he was the big brother of all slum children once upon a time... but he wasn't exactly the man that looked toward a future of raising his own.

Sure, if this kid looked like him, then it was better for him to take the child in. Now that he's a Count, who knows what'll happen to his relatives... It's hard enough keeping his old friends in the slums safe. At this point it was curiosity that kept him looking for this child.

What did the message mean, that he had been forsaken by Heaven? The Holy Faction better not have anything to do with this... There was too much tension right now, with the Kingdom and Magic Tower at odds. Giotto barely got the Underground to keep their hands out of that mess, he didn't want the church to ruin it all.

(Guess he'll have to ask Knuckle to check things out soon...)

(Ah, if he does adopt a kid soon, this weekend's Family Dinner will be crazy. They're not going to let him live this down. But come on, his intuition never fails, alright? They'll be mad, but they'll forgive him. They'll be really mad though.)

This orphanage— Maple's Home for Children— was a run-down place hosted by a sour-looking woman that smiled wryly as they approached. Giotto hid in the carriage as they greeted Damiano, thinking he was the noble— and she scowled at the holster and secretary, because they weren't who she was aiming to impress.

That made sense. Damiano's actually the son of a baron, so he's much more noble-looking and full of etiquette than anyone else in the Vongola entourage, including Giotto himself.

Giotto wasn't about to deal with classists anymore today.

"Things are always so much easier when I'm pretending to be a servant... Dami should let me do that more," Giotto sighed. "But no, of course not. I have to handle myself with the prestige befitting a noble or whatever. Isn't it enough that I behave myself at balls and meetings?" he complained to himself.

The place was so worn down, it was obvious the matron had no intention to use the donation money on maintaining the place. It was awful to think children were living here— it wasn't even so far into the forest to justify this frugality. The walls were wood, mostly, but there was brick in the most closed-off spots. This place had likely been an old hunter's cabin renovated for use, and that didn't bode well.

And that was when he'd spotted it.

Along the walls, there were low windows toward what he thought were rooms underground. But no— you only found underground rooms in noble houses. In run-down places, those low windows were for drainage.

And at the edge of one of those barred gaps were little, blood-crusted fingers.

-

In his defense, he panicked.

By the time his brain whirled to the thought of 'maybe he should at least try to be quiet', he'd already blown up the wall, searing flames burning the debris to ash before it could fall into whatever vulnerable being lay inside.

As the walls melted and gave way to light, a single figure so small it broke his heart came into view.

The boy lay against the walls, and soot and crease against his skin from laying against the walls too long. His legs were littered with wounds that have yet to fully scab over, and when he lifted his dull orange eyes so weakly upward, Giotto thought he was looking into a reflection of his worst nightmares as a child.

Starvation, malnourishment, and there was no life in those eyes. And yet he breathed, and he moved, only existing because he hadn't been picked up by the Grim Reaper.

Oh, heavens, he breathed, and dared not speak aloud. He really does resemble me too much.

He spoke, his words a little whisper, croaky from unuse.

"Vongola Primo?"

And Giotto instantly knew that this was the correct child. Why else would he call him the same thing that letter had referred to him?

And his second thought was, oh, he's not dead. He's not dead, the kid's still alive. How is he still alive, looking like that? How could anyone let a child get this far gone?

He's seen morbid things in the slums, and how could this child be in a similar state when he had a roof over his head, food for provision— how could people still find ways to be cruel? Why did humanity never cease to disappoint him?

It no longer mattered what this child was, where he came from, or for what purpose Giotto was sent to pick him up. He just knew that this child deserved everything in the world, and may the gods be damned, Giotto was going to give it to him.