"There were schools." That comes easily enough too. He stays honest, not thinking to use an omission of truth as a buffer to make himself look like something he's not. Denying it never even crosses his mind. "It's just that it cost money to go."

Even those who had parents were at a disadvantage in the larger, more downtrodden parts of the city he grew up in. There was no guaranteeing anything in Chryse beyond the gates of its pearly, luxurious center — not that families would stay as such, or that assets couldn't be lost, that there wasn't debt, or danger. So much of that possibility had become normalized that truly normal things, like school, were pushed farther back on the scale of what was possible.