At the early age of three, she grew up in an orphanage because of a car accident that claimed the lives of her parents, leaving her as the only survivor.
Upon checking her into a hospital, the doctors saw no bruises or bleeding, so she was discharged and sent to the orphanage; since no one showed up claiming to know her.
Life at the orphanage was hard as she lived off scraps of food, hand-me-down clothing and used schooling materials as those were the things she was privileged to have.
One of the things that made life more difficult was the unusual color of her hair; as one born with blood-red hair, no one understood why she would have that color. So, this caused her to be treated harshly.
She was often teased by other children in the orphanage as an ainoko "mixed blood".
Some had dared to whisper that she must have been a bastard child of some foreigner as she passed by; even the matrons of the orphanage avoided her as much as possible.
Feeling frustrated and lonely at such a tender age, she learned to shut down her emotions; never allowing what she heard from people to affect her way of life.
Even when she got into high school there was not any difference. She was treated as though invisible and by the age of sixteen, she was told to start looking for jobs so that by her eighteenth birthday she would have left the orphanage.
Luckily, she found a part-time job at a food café and a grocery store, with both jobs close to the orphanage; she began saving money.
As soon as the time came for her to move, a representative of the orphanage stood as a guarantor by providing the falsified document showing she was twenty-one to meet the apartment renting requirement.
Setting of the story is in Kyoto, Japan
Translator note
Ainoko*: Mixed blood, a derogatory term to refer to a person born from Japanese and non-Japanese parent.