Chapter 4: A Shocking Revelation

The sun was high in the sky, casting long golden streaks over the Caramel River District as Kevin worked tirelessly on his farm. His muscles ached from a day spent tending to crops, feeding animals, and repairing the fence one of his goats had stubbornly broken through. Normally, he found peace in the rhythm of farm life—the soft rustling of the wind through the trees, the distant babble of the river, the warm scent of freshly tilled soil—but today, his mind was far from at ease.

"I don't have parents you can complain to!" Luna's words echoed in his head, sharper than the sting in his shin from her well-placed kick. He had assumed she was just a troublemaker, a bratty kid with a grudge, but those words… They carried a weight he hadn't expected. He had no idea what had happened to her parents, and for the first time since her prank barrage started, he felt something other than frustration—he felt guilty.

As he wiped the sweat from his brow, Kevin glanced toward Waffle Town. His gaze lingered in the direction of the tailor shop. He had only met Candace and Luna so far, but clearly, there was more to their story. More to her story. And as much as he wanted to brush it off and let things go, the knot in his chest told him he wouldn't be able to.

With a heavy sigh, Kevin brushed the dirt from his palms and swung his rucksack over his shoulder. "Enough wondering," he whispered to himself. If he wanted answers, there was only one way to get them. It was time to head into town.

The walk was quiet, almost deceptively so. The beach stretched out beside him, waves breaking rhythmically against the shore while gulls wheeled overhead, their cries echoing in the cooling air. The sun had begun its slow descent, painting the horizon in shades of amber and rose. Waffle Town itself was hushed, its streets bathed in the stillness that came just before nightfall. And yet, Kevin's thoughts were anything but calm, Luna's sharp words looping endlessly in his mind.

By the time he reached the Chiffon Tailor Shop, lanterns glowed warmly at the entrance, casting golden light over the cobblestones and sending long, dancing shadows across the path. He had barely taken a step closer when movement caught his eye.

Candace stood just outside the shop, her arms piled high with boxes stacked precariously above her head. She shifted under their weight, her balance teetering dangerously with every small step.

Her steps were unsteady, and her grip wavered—one wrong move and the neatly folded garments inside the boxes would tumble onto the dusty ground. Panic flickered across her face as she realized she was about to drop them.

Kevin moved without thinking. "Whoa, I got it!" he said, swooping in just in time to steady the teetering boxes. Candace gasped softly in surprise, her blue eyes wide as Kevin carefully adjusted the load in his arms.

She let out a relieved sigh, pressing a hand to her chest. "Oh, thank you, Kevin! I—I was afraid they were going to get ruined."

Kevin gave her a reassuring smile and took half the load. "No problem. Looks like you had your hands full. Need help getting these to the shipping bin?"

Candace nodded gratefully. "Yes, please. They're orders for customers back in the city. I was just about to take them there, but… well, they're heavier than I expected."

Kevin chuckled. "No worries. Let's get these where they need to go." With that, they hefted the boxes with ease, Kevin following Candace toward the shipping bin as the cool evening breeze whispered through the streets of Waffle Town.

As they made their way toward the shipping bin, the weight of the boxes in Kevin's arms was nothing compared to the weight of the thoughts pressing on his mind. He glanced at Candace, who walked quietly beside him, her soft footsteps barely audible on the stone path.

"Candace," he started, his voice hesitant but firm, "can we talk for a moment?"

Candace looked up at him with mild curiosity. "Of course. What's on your mind?"

Kevin sighed, adjusting his grip on the boxes. "It's about Luna. She's been pulling pranks on my farm for a while now—scattering my tools, messing with my well, and last night…" He exhaled sharply. "I caught her sneaking into my barn, slathering fabric glue all over my saddle."

Candace gasped, nearly stopping in her tracks. "She—she did what?" Her usually calm expression shifted to one of deep concern. "Oh no… I knew she was up to something, but I didn't realize it was that bad." She shook her head, a mix of guilt and exasperation crossing her face. "I'm so sorry, Kevin. I'll talk to her."

Kevin offered a small shrug. "I appreciate that, but I don't get it. I don't understand why she's doing this in the first place. It feels like she hates me, and I don't even know why."

Candace looked down, her fingers tightening around the edges of the boxes she carried, knuckles whitening with hesitation. It was clear she was weighing something—how much to say, how deep to let him in. The truth was simple, but not easy: Luna had always struggled with strangers, their stares, their assumptions. That unease had shaped more of her life than anyone outside the family could ever know.

It was one of the main reasons they had returned to Waffle Town. Here, people knew Luna—knew to look beyond her stature, to treat her with the quiet respect she deserved. They didn't gawk or second-guess her adulthood. They understood that her size wasn't the measure of her strength.

But Kevin… he was new. Kind, yes. Genuine. But the truth had a way of changing things, sometimes for the worse. If he didn't understand—if he reacted the wrong way—it could drive a wedge too deep to repair.

She stayed quiet, lost in thought, until they reached the shipping bin. Kevin set the boxes down with care, brushing the dust from his hands. Then he turned to her again, eyes steady, full of quiet questions.

"There's something else," he continued, his voice quieter now. "Last night, when I caught her, she yelled something before running off. She said… 'I don't have parents you can complain to.'"

Candace's expression shifted, her usual calm overtaken by something distant, fragile—a sadness that seemed to settle deep in her eyes. She gave a slow, almost reluctant nod.

"Yes," she murmured, her voice soft. "Our parents passed away ten years ago. It was… a tragedy. One of those moments that splits your life in half. Everything changed after that."

Her gaze drifted toward the town, where the rooftops of Waffle Town shimmered beneath the setting sun, a place that had become their safe haven after so much pain. She took a breath, steadying herself before she continued.

"It was sudden. We had only just moved to the city. None of us were used to it—so many people, so many rules, and too many who ignored them. The roads were always loud, crowded, fast. We thought it would be a fresh start. But then the call came. There'd been an accident."

Candace's voice caught for a moment, but she pushed through it.

"They were gone. Just like that. Hit in the middle of an intersection by someone too impatient to stop at a red light. We never got to say goodbye."

She fell silent, the weight of memory thick in the air. The pain hadn't faded—it had simply become quieter with time. Softer around the edges, but never truly gone.

Kevin exhaled slowly, the weight of Candace's revelation settling over him like a heavy wool blanket. He had never realized that both Candace and Luna carried such a harrowing history. Suddenly, Luna's guarded nature—her stubborn independence, her quick temper—began to make sense in a way it never had before. She wasn't just strong-willed. She had learned to be that way. She had to be.

But then, a quiet unease began to curl in Kevin's stomach. He frowned, the thought circling in his mind like a cloud refusing to clear. Something didn't quite add up.

He had always assumed Luna was a child; ten, maybe twelve at most. But Candace had said they lost their parents ten years ago. Kevin's breath hitched. If that were true, Luna would've been a baby, a toddler at his oldest estimate

The math didn't lie, and suddenly the pieces he'd always believed in no longer fit. While losing parents at any age would make anyone feel sad and depressed, the grief, the fury, the way she spoke of her parents—it wasn't the kind of sorrow passed down through stories or faded photographs. It was raw. Personal. As if she'd truly known them, lived with them, loved them for years before they were taken away. That kind of pain didn't come from memory gaps—it came from memories far too vivid to forget.

He glanced at Candace, whose eyes had returned to the horizon, her features unreadable beneath the soft light of late afternoon. The silence between them stretched thin, pulled taut by the weight of what wasn't being said. And in that silence, a question took root—quiet, trembling, and impossible to ignore.

He hesitated, the question lingering on the edge of his lips like a fragile thread. Finally, he spoke, his voice low and careful, as though afraid the truth might fracture something delicate between them.

"Candace… how old is Luna?"

Candace blinked, clearly surprised by the question. "She'll be twenty on the twenty-fifth day of Spring," she replied, her tone casual, almost confused. "Why?"

Kevin's breath caught in his throat. He staggered back a step, the world tilting slightly as a realization hit him like a jolt of cold water. "Twenty?" He thought to himself. The image he had of Luna—this fiery, stubborn, impulsive girl—suddenly rearranged itself into something else entirely. A woman. A grown woman, one who had been surviving in a body too small for her years, hiding behind sharp words and fierce independence.

"I…" Kevin swallowed hard. "I thought she was just a kid. Just… a kid throwing tantrums."

Candace's expression shifted, her eyes narrowing slightly with concern. "She didn't tell you?"

He shook his head, still trying to process the truth. "No. She never said anything. I—I just assumed…" His voice trailed off. The guilt was creeping in now, thick and suffocating.

"Why is she so small?" he asked finally, the question edged with something like desperation.

Candace paused, her eyes shadowed with the weight of memory, as if carefully selecting each word before letting it go. "Nobody really knows why she stopped growing," she said softly. "The doctors ran every test they could think of. They said her bones were fine, her hormones normal. Physically, there was no explanation."

She drew in a slow breath, eyes lifting to the golden horizon where the sun bled into the sea of rooftops. "But they think it was the trauma. The grief. The shock. Something so deep it reached into her body and told it to stop. Like her heart couldn't move forward, so her body didn't either."

Her voice trembled slightly as she spoke, haunted by a day that would never leave her. "We arrived at the hospital, and they were gone. Just like that. I broke down and cried—loud, messy, inconsolable. But Luna…" Candace swallowed hard. "Luna didn't cry. She collapsed right there in the room and slipped into a coma. Just… shut down."

The silence between them was heavy.

"She woke up weeks later," Candace continued, her voice a whisper. "But everything had changed. She came back to a world where our parents were never coming home. And from that moment on, it was like time just… gave up on her. She kept growing in other ways—her voice changed, her body matured, she went theough puberty, her hair kept growing—but her height never did. She just stayed small. Like part of her was frozen in the moment they died."

Candace turned to Kevin then, her expression open and tired. "It's not something we talk about. Most people assume she's younger than she is—and honestly, she prefers it that way. It gives her a shield. But she loses her temper when someone points it out."

Kevin listened in silence, the ache in his chest deepening with every word. Luna's strength, her fire, her stubbornness—it had all been forged in the aftermath of something unimaginably painful. And he had never seen it, not until now.

Kevin exhaled sharply, feeling like the biggest idiot in all of Waffle Town. "I messed up," he thought, his mind flashing back to the first time they met.

"You are just adorable. I bet you'll be really cute when you grow up."

Kevin swallowed hard, guilt pressing into his chest like a heavy weight. The pranks, the anger, the way Luna had lashed out at him—it all made sense now. She wasn't just being childish. She was expressing herself in the only way she knows because of something she couldn't control. And he had only made her feel worse.

Candace noticed the troubled look on Kevin's face, the way his brows furrowed and his jaw tensed as if he were piecing everything together. Gently, she asked, "What's on your mind?"

Kevin exhaled sharply, rubbing the back of his neck. "When I first met Luna, I said something thoughtless. I told her she'd be really cute when she grew up—like she was still a little kid or something."

Candace's eyes widened, a soft gasp escaping her lips. "Oh... No wonder she's acting like this."

Kevin let out a groan, his shoulders slumping. "I had no idea… I mean, I didn't mean to hurt her, but now that I know, I can't just let it sit. I need to apologize."

A small, knowing smile played on Candace's lips. "If you really want her to listen, you'll need to soften her up first," she suggested. "Luna has a weakness for sweets and flowers. If you bring her something she likes, she'll be more likely to hear you out."

Kevin straightened up, determination flashing in his eyes. "Sweets or flowers, huh? Alright… if that's what it takes, then I'll do it. I'll make this right."

After thanking Candace for her advice, Kevin made his way back to his farm, his mind set on making amends. As soon as he arrived, he rushed over to his flower garden, only to stop short. His stomach sank—he had already harvested and sold all of his moondrop flowers earlier that week.

He sighed, rubbing his chin in thought. "Alright, no flowers... but maybe..."

Then it hit him. "Elli! She loves to bake as a hobby, and if there was one thing Luna might like more than flowers, it's something sweet." A slow grin spread across his face as an idea took root. Luna's birthday was coming up in five days. If he could get Elli to bake a special cake just for her, it might be enough to smooth things over and finally put an end to her pranks.

With renewed determination, Kevin nodded to himself. "Alright, Luna. You won this round. But let's see if you can stay mad at me after this!"