The last house at the edge of town, just past the bridge, was the kind of place no one looked at for too long. The road leading to it was barely more than a memory, half-swallowed by creeping vines and the quiet patience of things left forgotten.
The house itself had always seemed misplaced, hunched beneath the weight of years, its windows dulled with age and grime. It stood as a secret, pressed into the town like an apology no one wanted to explain.
No one lived there. No one ever had. And yet, one morning, someone left a gift on its doorstep. A loaf of bread, golden and warm.
No one knocked. No one was seen. But the bread remained. The next morning, another gift. A porcelain cup of tea, still steaming.
Then a stone, round and smooth. A key, wrapped in fraying string. A ribbon, soft as breath.
No one ever saw who placed them, and no one ever saw who took them. But each morning, without fail, the gifts would be gone.
Then, one night, a lantern appeared.
It flickered weakly in the cold air, its rusted iron frame older than the town itself. The glass was clouded, its flame humming with a light too deep, too knowing.
And for the first time, something answered inside the house. A whisper.“Thank you.”
No one heard it, but the town was different the following day.
The air hung thick with an unspoken weight. The wind did not move. The sky, though clear, felt pressed too close. And the house at the edge of town?
Gone.
Not abandoned. Not ruined. Just… gone. The earth where it had stood was smooth and undisturbed, as though it had never been there at all.
But the gifts kept coming.
Jessica found a note at her door, bound with black ribbon. The words were simple, inked with a hand too steady to be human.
“Thank you.”
Jane, the baker’s daughter, received a golden coin. Mrs. Cranston, the schoolteacher, found a mirror wrapped in velvet. Even Mayor Harrow received a letter—delivered with no hands at all.
And the gifts did something.
The town changed. People smiled more, spoke in softer voices. Mrs. Cranston grew gentler with her students. Jane hummed while kneading dough. The mayor, who once clutched power with greedy fingers, gave more than he took.
The gifts wove something unseen into their lives, something delicate, insidious.
And then, one evening, a man came.
Tall and quiet, wrapped in a cloak of a woven material that seems heavy and thick. A cormorant perched on his shoulder, watching with eyes like the ocean at night.
He stood at the edge of town and spoke in a voice like an echo from deep earth.
“They’ve learned it.”
His gaze moved over the town, and the people felt the weight of something vast, something endless, pressing against their bones.
“Kindness… is not a gift.”
“It is a debt.”
And just as suddenly as he arrived, he was gone. The cormorant shrieked once, then shot into the sky, vanishing into the night.
But from that day on, the gifts never stopped.
People kept receiving them. More notes. More ribbons. More coins, mirrors, keys.
They had no choice but to accept.
Because kindness is a debt. And debts must be paid.
And somewhere, buried beneath their quiet smiles, a question grew.
What happens when the debt is paid in full?