Tau was quiet.

I had expected him to talk, at least to complain about something. But nothing. Quietly he carried a grey, very old looking backpack and an even older looking teddy bear.

"Hey, sorry for not asking earlier", I said while we walked through the hallway and stepped into sunlight. "But how old are you?"

Abruptly he stopped and stared at me frowning.

"You signed that contract-thing and don't even know how old I am?" He shook his head, gazed at Kaami who was a few steps ahead, then looked up at the sun. "Maybe Cheryl told us, but I can't remember. I'm sorry."

"Twelve", he answered and walked past me.

And that was it for the next forty minutes.

He just sat there on the back seat of the car and stared out of the window. When Kaami or I tried to talk to him, we would only get one-word-answers, so we gave up, eventually.

He probably still was nervous as hell - or maybe not? I mean, what did Cheryl say about ten families rejecting him? Did he get used to this?

"Here we are", Kaami commented while pulling in on the car park.

Tau didn't move. He looked at the buildings around us. Most of them were apartments. "Which one is yours?"

"The red one on the left." Kaami pointed at the building - a rather old one with nice white window frames and high ceilings.

"Nice", was the only thing Tau said before getting out of the car.

Although he tried to be cool and all, he surely was impressed by the stairway. Every time I walked up or down, I was, too. The walls were painted in dusky pink and every wooden stair made a soft creaking noise beneath our feet. Tau put his hand on the handrail while walking up.

"So, no elevator here?" "Nope. You have to walk up and down every day."

"Which floor?" "Third one."

We walked up slowly. Tau seemed to have to take in every single bit of the stairway. I walked behind him. Right in front of me was the back of his backpack. One of the zippers was half broken and it made the backpack look like an always open mouth of some strange creature. "You know that your backpack is broken?" "Don't care. It's my favorite." "Okay."

When we arrived at the third floor Tau made a pause to catch his breath and to look at the ceiling. Right above us hung a chandelier - a rather big one. All of the plastic LED-candles irradiated warm, soft light.

"White or grey?" "Huh?" We looked at the kid. "The white or the grey door?" "White one. It's older and still made out of wood." "Very interesting." Tau tilted his head to the right. His eyes flickered from Kaami to me and back.

Finally Kaami fumbled the door key out of his pocket to unlock the door.

"Welcome home", he whispered, but Tau only huffed in disbelief.

The first day was very quiet. I guess Tau needed time to process what had happened and Kaami and I had - well, we had to process things, too.

After entering the apartment, we showed Tau around, but he said he needed to have time for himself and went to his room - our former office room. We had had enough time to buy a real bed and a small closet. But it still looked a bit unfriendly and cold.

I had hoped that, if we would have the kid over, this would change. But the only prove, we were fostering a child now, was the teddy Tau had brought.

"I didn't imagine it to be this hard", Kaami said and took a sip of tea. He had changed into some sweater and sweatpants. I could see his wagging tail beside his chair.

"What do you mean?" He shrugged.

"This is all messed up. I thought we had told them that I was a tiger." "Oh about that-" I took his hand in mine and brushed over his palm. I loved his long fingers, the fur that made them fluffy and the feeling they left on my bare skin.

"I think they were fully aware of that. They didn't want us to foster, I guess." "That's shitty." "That's some hard bullshit." "Just because we don't fit in their perfect parents-picture doesn't mean we can’t do as good as them!"

"Doing what?"