Chapter Text
As the days carried on, so profoundly simple compared to everything Scaramouche had ever known, Kazuha became more comfortable around him. Having grown used to Scaramouche’s silence, he either filled it with idle chatter or, more often, just allowed the quiet to linger. He allowed and encouraged Scaramouche to help him with his indoor and outdoor tasks, and had Scaramouche accompany him on what he called ‘evening walks’ in the woods.
All were actions that one could easily explain away using Kazuha’s oddities, save for one: that Kazuha allowed Scaramouche to continue resting in his bed while he slept in it. Fully asleep and unguarded, he wore a serene expression on his face, lit only by the dim moonlight coming in through the window.
Scaramouche had come to understand, or at least accept, most of Kazuha’s strange behaviors as just things Kazuha did. It took more energy than it was worth to judge most of them. But this? He couldn’t wrap his head around it.
Sleep was a vulnerable time for humans. Naturally, most weren’t trusting enough to sleep in front of strangers, unless said human was a child. This doubly applied to sharing the bed to sleep, and that was when the other person was human. For an adult human with full awareness of the world to share their bed with a puppet was absurd.
Kazuha and the nameless child would have gotten along, he thought. He had done a lot of thinking about the past these last few nights sitting up in the bed, both willingly and unwillingly. A past in which his only purpose was that of a test subject, indestructible and everlasting.
The nameless child had been a colorful exception to his otherwise dull existence. Alongside his presence, the child brought with him stories of things Scaramouche had never heard of, or even thought to conceptualize.
“There are so many good things out there waiting for me, I know it,” the child had said while doodling with some crayons on some spare paper. A researcher, one of the ones who always had a conflicted expression on her face when it came to the child, let him have it to keep him quiet. “Candy, hugs, toys… I can’t wait to show you too when we go outside.”
At some point later, the same researcher did end up bringing the child a small doll. Such a simple thing had the child beaming for days. It resulted in the child bringing the doll nearly everywhere he went in his joy, which again, Scaramouche couldn’t understand. Although that applied to almost everything the child did and said, especially his response to Scaramouche being taken away for another test.
“It’s impossible for me to die,” Scaramouche tried to reassure the child clinging to his waist, painfully aware of the researcher standing in the doorway. Thankfully, it was the same one who had given the child the doll, who seemed content to just watch them rather than force the child away. “I’ll be back.”
“But they’ll hurt you.” Barely able to speak through his sobs, the child buried his face in Scaramouche’s white robe. “They’ll hurt you.”
Later that night, after another drug trial, he tried explaining to the child that this was his purpose, and that it was fine. The child, whose tears had already begun when Scaramouche returned being dragged by one of the researchers, only cried harder.
“It’s not fine,” said the child. “They shouldn’t hurt you. You deserve good things too!”
Their conversations on the subject always went that way. They never had a proper conclusion, either, as neither Scaramouche nor the child could fully understand the other’s point of view. Scaramouche would simply end it by reminding the child of their promise to someday go outside and see good things and good people. That seemed to be enough to calm the child for that moment, at least.
Good things and good people. His belief in those two concepts died with the nameless child. Even their remains were dismantled piece by piece as his treatment at the hands of the Doctor’s research team grew more vindictive, burning a new set of ideas into his mind.
He would never belong. He was meant to suffer, and always would. For the world the nameless child described was for humans, not puppets.
But Kazuha had proven this set of beliefs wrong, and in turn, proven the nameless child right. Kazuha wished him no harm. He had realized it the moment Kazuha chose to offer his scarf in a gesture of comfort, although he only fully processed it days later. Kazuha trusted him, enough to go so far as to share his bed with him, and was kind to him.
All this while Kazuha knew he was a puppet. He saw constant reminders of that fact, considering Scaramouche no longer covered his hands. Those two things, Kazuha’s knowledge of the truth and his kindness, coexisted. And that coexistence had proved the impossible to be possible.
Sound asleep beside him, Kazuha remained oblivious to Scaramouche’s thoughts. He had pulled his red blankets up to his chin as he laid partially curled up beneath them on his side facing Scaramouche. His white hair had managed to escape its ponytail in his sleep. It framed his face, almost having an ethereal glow because of the moonlight’s angle.
It looked soft. Scaramouche reached out before he could stop himself, brushing some of it aside with a feather-light touch. It immediately fell back to where it was, spilling across Scaramouche’s ball-jointed fingers as it went. The feeling was… nice. He wanted to touch Kazuha’s hair again.
A sudden exhale and shift of movement from Kazuha had him tearing his hand away, holding it to his chest and pulling his sleeve down over it for good measure. He even made a show out of looking the other way, locking his eyes on the window in the slim chance Kazuha did wake up.
Kazuha remained peacefully sleeping, to his relief. Still, Scaramouche didn’t allow himself to touch Kazuha’s hair for the rest of the night, no matter how badly he wanted to. Something about the gesture felt intimately close in a way he couldn’t explain, and the idea of being caught in the act mortified him.
Slowly but surely, the frost began to melt as time moved forward. Kazuha wrote in his notebook for hours on certain days, during which Scaramouche would either watch him or read some of Kazuha’s many books—filled to the brim with information about the natural world, often written in the same flowery style Kazuha enjoyed. He would then encourage Scaramouche to ask him questions about his books, something that Scaramouche went along with purely for Kazuha’s amusement. From the way his entire face lit up during their resulting conversations, it worked, too.
Kazuha’s appreciation for nature even extended to what he put on the television while cleaning or relaxing on the large chair; or the couch, as Kazuha called it. Tonight, he had chosen to sit on the couch beside Scaramouche rather than clean, just close enough to where Scaramouche could feel the edge of his body heat, but not any closer.
The programs they watched were ‘documentaries’, according to Kazuha. He had explained that he always preferred those to other programs such as ‘the news’ and ‘movies’. The one he found for that night told an interesting story about ornately dressed humans who referred to themselves as shrine maidens. These shrine maidens then dedicated their lives to maintaining and preserving a mountain upon which an ancient tree grew.
“That mountain isn’t far from here. The city just blocks our view of it,” Kazuha said during a break in the program.
That was another thing he did: talk. Even if he never received an answer from Scaramouche, he would talk, almost as if extending an invitation for a discussion.
It always made Scaramouche painfully aware of how little he knew about holding conversations. Still, he figured he’d try and make an effort at least sometimes. Both to better learn how to blend in with humans, and because some newfound corner of his mind liked the way Kazuha smiled when he did contribute.
He didn’t like to think about that corner of his mind. It made something in his chest flutter. So, he focused back on the television, which was on another boring advertisement characteristic of the documentary break periods.
By the time the advertisement ended, having gone on far too long for a skit about a vacuum cleaner, he had managed to come up with a suitable question.
“If it’s close enough for you to go there, why bother watching it on television?”
“I haven’t been in years, mainly because the most convenient way there requires passing through the city. I…” Kazuha sighed. “I prefer to live away from it all.”
“You dislike other humans,” Scaramouche said.
He couldn’t blame Kazuha for that. The only city humans he had interacted with outside the lab had tried to rob him. Plus, the city itself was miserably bright, loud, and crowded, likely with humans just as insufferable. Maybe, Kazuha disliked them because he knew how different he was from them. He was certainly the only good adult human Scaramouche knew of.
“It’s not that,” Kazuha sputtered.
Unconvinced, Scaramouche shot him an incredulous look.
“Honestly, it isn’t,” said Kazuha. “My issue lies more with the world’s changing path than anything else. I’ve found that there simply isn’t a place for me among the chaos of it all. I’m far more suited for life out here.”
To think that anyone would find happiness in being left behind by society was absurd. Yet for Kazuha, it somehow made sense. Scaramouche couldn’t picture somewhere like him anywhere else.
“I’ve always had the cats for company, anyway. And now, I have you.”
Kazuha gave him another one of his beaming smiles that again made Scaramouche’s chest flutter with warmth. He looked away, unwilling to confront the feeling or its source for too long.
How Kazuha found him to be good company, he had no idea. He couldn’t fully imitate human behavior if he tried. No one had ever expected him to, because he wasn’t one. Technically, he wasn’t even considered a person. Reminding Kazuha of that always seemed to make him upset, though, so Scaramouche would let him think what he wanted. Kazuha’s poor judgment of proper company wasn’t his problem.
On other evenings, they would sit outside in the twilight after feeding the cats, enjoying the warming temperatures and steadily growing hours of daylight. The cats would even sit with them, sometimes, and Kazuha would show Scaramouche how to pet their soft fur.
They would then go in for the night afterwards, get ready for bed, and once again lie beside each other for the night. Or at least, Scaramouche would try until he couldn’t take another moment of lying down anymore. For despite Kazuha’s admittedly helpful presence, lying in the bed still frequently brought with it awful memories. Instead, he would spend those nights curled up against the headboard, listening to Kazuha’s sleeping breaths.
It didn’t take long for Kazuha to notice this. Even worse, it had been on one of Scaramouche’s worse nights, where he lacked the willpower to force himself to lie back down when he knew Kazuha had woken up. Kazuha, being scarily perceptive, immediately knew something was wrong too, and had sat up to move next to him. Worse than that, Kazuha then admitted to knowing Scaramouche did this almost every other night, and somehow wasn’t upset about it.
“Is there anything I can do?” Kazuha asked, his red eyes filled with unbearable care and concern. “You don’t have to tell me what’s wrong. I’d just like to help if I can.”
Even if he wanted to spill every detail of his past to Kazuha, Scaramouche had not the slightest idea where to begin. He had far too many bad memories to explain them all, and he knew Kazuha would want to know more, to know why any of it had to happen at all.
But that was the thing. Other than being told that it was his purpose, Scaramouche didn’t know the reasoning behind most of the experiments. Especially not many of the ones that particularly haunted him, which had taken place after the nameless child’s death. Nor would he be able to answer other inevitable questions, such as why he never resisted or tried to escape before. Or why he had even willingly gone along with some of them.
It was all too complicated. Thinking about having to explain it only worsened his distress, too.
“If… if sharing the bed with me upsets you, either one of us can have the couch,” said Kazuha gently.
Scaramouche shook his head. If anything, Kazuha was the only thing making the bed tolerable. After another minute passed, Kazuha stood up,
“Let’s go grab some tea. I’ll teach you how to make it this time, okay?”
They went to the kitchen and Kazuha did as he said, showing Scaramouche how to properly make tea. He then told Scaramouche that he could make tea for himself at any time, including during the night while Kazuha slept, if it helped him. So, that became Scaramouche’s new way to deal with bad nights. Tea and wandering the house soon graduated to tea and reading books, then to tea and watching the television at a low volume.
Scaramouche didn’t know much about television. It had no touch screen or keyboard, primarily controlled by a remote control device with simple buttons. There were many programs to watch on television, separated into categories called channels. He could even change these channels, which he did often, testing out different types of programs. Kazuha was right about the news. But movies were fascinating, which had led him to tonight’s program: a movie about two humans living together.
He let it play, watching curiously. These two humans, one with short hair and one with long hair, seemed quite happy living in a pair. They had meals together, went places together, and even shared a bed with each other.
Upon watching one human put their arm over the other, he couldn’t help but think back to one of the few nights he had laid comfortably in the bed. Kazuha, sound asleep, had done the same thing to him, and stayed that way for nearly an hour.
The humans in the program did many things similar to him and Kazuha, now that he thought about it. Eating together and walking together were things he and Kazuha did. The television humans even went to a place with trees called a park where they saw a cat, which they took home to live with them.
Then, during a scene backlit by the setting sun, the two humans said a word that caught him off guard.
Love. They loved each other.
Scaramouche’s eyes widened. If all those things were what humans who loved each other did, did that mean he and Kazuha loved each other too?
He leaned forward on the couch, now fully engrossed in the program. Too engrossed to question himself about why the idea of sharing that kind of love with Kazuha made him feel so light. He tried to figure out which human in the program would represent which one of them, only to end up confused.
The human with the long hair always cooked and cared for inside the house, much like Kazuha. While the human with short hair dealt with the yard outside, which Kazuha did too. Maybe, it was normal for humans in love to split tasks like that. But how did they split them, and which tasks would Scaramouche do in his situation?
He did have the shorter hair out of the two of them, so that probably meant he should take care of the yard. But Scaramouche didn’t know nearly enough about the yard to do that. Plus, Kazuha enjoyed caring for the yard. However, he knew even less about cooking and indoor house cleaning, two things Kazuha also enjoyed. Should he try and learn a bit of everything, then?
On the television, the shorter haired human got down on one knee under the sunset’s orange glow and began an emotional speech. The human spoke of loyalty, sharing their lives together, and finally, of eternal love. Scaramouche listened to every word, trying to absorb it into his memory.
“... to you, if you’ll have it, I dedicate my heart,” the human said, sounding close to tears.
That single admission froze Scaramouche in place, sending a spike of pain through his core. Despite imitating human biology in many ways, his puppet body lacked a heart. Which meant he had nothing to dedicate to Kazuha.
They would never have what the television humans had, because Scaramouche wasn’t human. He furiously cursed himself for even daring to think about comparing his situation to the program. He couldn’t love like a human. And no one could love him like a human, either.
In the background, the long-haired human on the television said something, but Scaramouche cut them off midway through with a click of a remote button, turning off the screen altogether. He didn’t want to hear them also promise their heart to the person they loved, and then see the two humans share their hearts, overcome with joy. Not when the sight would make him want the same thing with Kazuha more powerfully than he had ever wanted before.
Scaramouche stared down at his ball-jointed hands in the now dark, quiet room on a worn-out couch. He made sure to burn the sight into his memory as a constant reminder of his reality—so vastly different from that of two humans on a television program.
He didn’t dare return to Kazuha’s bedroom for the entire night, either. It would only taunt him and the stupid, selfish part of himself that wanted to be close to Kazuha in a way that he never could be. Instead, he spent the rest of the night on the couch, drowning himself in the most complex book he could find to erase the program in its entirety from his mind.
—
“It seems that the soil has thawed out enough to prepare it for seeds,” Kazuha said, having just disturbed a patch of dirt with a shovel. Scaramouche watched from nearby, leaning against a weathered fence. A cat enjoying the rays of the morning sun had joined him on a neighboring fence post.
Scaramouche had lived with Kazuha for just over a month. Winter had begun its transition into spring, with tiny signs of plant life starting to pop up out of the ground all over Kazuha’s yard. Trees had started to regain their green foliage, and the days had grown longer and warmer. The perfect time to set up the garden, apparently.
“Took you long enough. Anyone else would’ve grown tired of checking dirt every day for a week,” Scaramouche replied.
Beside him, the cat meowed. A childish part of him wanted to believe the creature agreed with him and wasn’t just begging for attention like it always did. Either way, he gave the cat’s gray and white head a quick pat. Kazuha had his back turned, so it didn’t count.
“Come here I’ll show you how to plant one, if you’d like.”
That was another change Kazuha had made in the past few weeks: suggesting they do things together rather than just having Scaramouche watch. He applied this to both household tasks and his more eccentric hobbies, such as writing poems in his notebook.
He had gone as far as to give Scaramouche his own notebook, explaining that he could use it for anything he wanted, not just poems. For some reason, Kazuha had also made a big deal out of insisting he would never touch it without explicit permission. Which, to his credit, he stuck to, even when Scaramouche left it in inconvenient places purely to test his resolve.
Despite never actually writing in the notebook, watching Kazuha go out of his way to respect such a simple thing filled him with a mixture of amusement and warmth.
(And if he loved having something, no matter how useless or insignificant, to call his own, then no one had to know.)
Scaramouche decided to indulge Kazuha’s gardening request and sat down beside him in the dirt. There, Kazuha showed him the simple steps of digging a small hole, placing a few tiny seeds in it, and then covering it back up. He then offered his garden gloves to Scaramouche and waited, clearly expecting him to do the same.
With a sigh, he grabbed the shovel and got to work. Dig, add a patch of seeds, and cover it up. When he finished the last step, he looked out across the rest of the garden, which took up a surprising amount of space in the yard.
“Do you do this every year?” He asked.
The ‘alone?’ went unspoken. Kazuha nodded.
“It cuts down on the trips to the city I have to make during the warmer months. So, in my eyes, it’s worth it.”
Normally, Kazuha traveled to the city around once per month. He had actually gone just the week before and slept for nearly the entire day after coming home. The noise got to him, he said.
But Scaramouche had a feeling it ran far deeper than a simple aversion to noise and crowds. The more he learned about humans from books and television programs, the more aware he became of the surprising lack of technology in and around Kazuha’s home. Kazuha’s way of life was deeply old fashioned compared to the rest of human society.
Combining this with Kazuha’s previous statements about the world’s path and his lack of a place in it, Scaramouche could put two and two together. Yet one piece of his conclusion just didn’t align, sticking out like a puzzle piece that someone had tried to force into the wrong spot.
“Your dislike of the city is because of its unnatural and chaotic atmosphere, right?” Scaramouche questioned.
He had grown far more comfortable in conversation as of late, both due to his own growing experience and because Kazuha made an interesting discussion partner.
“I suppose that’s one way of putting it.” Kazuha gathered some soil into his hands, allowing it to slip through his fingers and fall back onto the ground below. “It’s too…”
“Advanced.” Scaramouche finished the statement for him. When Kazuha only blinked at him with surprised eyes, he continued. “One of your books, that one from the botanist in Sumeru, talks about it. How humans have abandoned nature in favor of pursuing an advanced technological future.”
“That’s a rather extreme way of putting it, but yes, that’s part of it,” said Kazuha. “Although I don’t fully agree with everything the author says later on. Personally, I only wish to maintain my own way of life. Others can do as they please.”
So, he guessed correctly. Which meant it was time for the next, far more important question. Scaramouche took a deep breath. It was something he had thought about quite frequently as of late during his occasional night time wandering. Try as he might, he could never piece together the solution. He eventually concluded that the only way to deduce the answer was to ask Kazuha himself.
“If that’s the case,” he said, clenching his hands as tight as he could underneath the thick garden gloves. “Then why do you want me to stay?”
Once again, Kazuha said nothing, just staring at him, his red eyes wide. Scaramouche continued.
“Humanity’s rapidly approaching future disheartens you, so you avoid it. Yet look at me.” Pulling up the sleeve of his light jacket, Scaramouche removed one glove to show Kazuha his ball-jointed hand and wrist.
“I… I’m the closest thing to a physical representation of that future that there could be. An artificial human puppet,” he choked out, willing his hand to remain steady. “How can you stand it? Knowing that in my creation, humanity has violated every natural law that you claim to care about?”
Kazuha kept staring, his mouth slightly agape. Scaramouche waited, but when it continued for half a minute, he had finally had enough.
“Say something,” he spat. He had spent far too long thinking this over to go without an answer. “Now.”
“I honestly never thought about it that way,” Kazuha stammered, breaking eye contact.
Scaramouche raised an eyebrow. “You never once thought about the fact that you’ve allowed an artificial being with no need to eat, drink, or sleep into your home?”
“Not in the way you’re thinking.” Kazuha met his gaze again, beginning to regain his composure, his voice strong. “To me, you are yourself. A person whose company I enjoy and who I care about. Nothing more to it.”
Leave it to Kazuha to say things that would sound utterly ridiculous coming from anyone else and still be genuine. Because that was just who he was. Strange, honest, overly trusting, and accepting of others with his entire being. Even if those others weren’t human. Scaramouche shook his head with a scoff.
“You know how you told me people say you’ve lost your head in the clouds?” Scaramouche said. “They’re right. You’ve given me a new understanding of the expression.”
When Kazuha’s once concerned face broke into a smile and he laughed, Scaramouche crossed his arms and turned away, trying to fight off a smile of his own. Another quality to add to his ‘strange things about Kazuha’ list: being unable to take an insult.
Soon after, they went back to seed planting, which took up the remainder of the day. The crowd of cats gathered in the yard looked about ready to break down the shed door to reach their food by the time he and Kazuha finished, rushing to Kazuha the moment he stood up.
The seeds began to sprout within a week. Kazuha had called him over to see it when the first one poked its tiny green stem out of the soil, excitement clear on his face. Personally, Scaramouche didn’t understand why something guaranteed to happen was worth all the fuss. But since it made Kazuha happy, he went along with it.
Kazuha had chosen this partly cloudy afternoon to start removing undesirable plants called ‘weeds’ from the garden’s perimeter. The task went quickly with both of them working, until finally, the only section left was Kazuha’s pile of decorative stones beside the garden, close by a tree. Scaramouche, being the faster of the two at pulling weeds, reached it first, and took a moment to observe it first.
This pile of stones was important to Kazuha. He swept the dust off them nearly every day, and would occasionally linger nearby the pile for a few minutes after. In the center of the stones was an open space, situated like it was waiting for something to fill it.
Behind him, Kazuha’s footsteps approached, crunching over a few stray twigs. He had left for the shed a few minutes ago, now having returned with a long bundle of tan cloth in his arms. Kazuha sat down at Scaramouche’s feet and began to unwrap the bundle, revealing a long blade that could have easily come straight out of one of Kazuha’s books about ancient swordplay.
“This belonged to my dear friend,” Kazuha said, likely sensing Scaramouche’s confusion. He wiped the blade with the cloth as he spoke, his voice heavier than usual, but not sad. “Although I can’t display it all year, it still deserves some time in the open air. It’s what he would wish for.”
Humans respected their dead. Or at least, they should—Scaramouche had learned that from a documentary program they watched about a place dedicated to burying dead humans called a cemetery. It would be a lie if he said he fully understood the idea, but as usual, he wanted to try.
“Is that what this… setup is about?” Scaramouche asked, sitting down beside Kazuha to watch more closely.
“Partially.” Kazuha gently laid the sword across the stones. “Honoring the dead is how we preserve their memory as a valuable life. Some who believe in the concept of a soul even say that a proper resting place is the key to bringing peace to those who died, especially unjustly. In caring for this blade, I believe I’ve provided that for my friend.”
Kazuha then removed a second object from the cloth, a circular pendant about the size of his palm. He placed it beneath the sword in the center of the stone pile. The sunlight poking through the clouds made its gold edges shimmer, and reflected off the purple stone the circular border surrounded.
Watching it made Scaramouche’s chest feel heavy. For despite knowing nothing about the history of the two items, he knew that for Kazuha, they represented loss.
“However, there is another purpose of memorials,” Kazuha continued, staring down at the sword and pendant with an unreadable expression. “They help bring peace to those whom the deceased left behind. Parting words that were originally never delivered can be said, and those left grieving can settle their regrets. I… I’ve found peace this way as well.”
After that, Kazuha remained quiet, allowing them to sit in silence. Scaramouche let it continue for a while, processing Kazuha’s words. As he did, his thoughts wandered, dragging with them a powerful urge to speak about something he never thought he would.
He ignored it at first. But as the desire grew stronger, he began to rationalize it. Part of human conversation involved sharing things about yourself related to the current situation. If he said what he wanted to say, he’d be practicing that. Nothing more, nothing less.
“I once knew a child who wanted to experience the outside world,” Scaramouche began. He kept his eyes locked on one of the stones in front of him, refusing to meet Kazuha’s gentle gaze. “He wanted to see the outside world more than anything. It was all he thought about.”
Said outside world was the same one all around them right now. The chirping of birds, the bright greens of sprouting plants, growing trees, and the warm sun shining down onto every inhabitant. Scaramouche swallowed before continuing to speak.
“He never got that chance, because it was stolen from him. And no one cared,” he said. “That feels…”
He searched for a word, thoughts filled with whimsical images of a child’s dreams. A child who, before being led away, said to Scaramouche what he always did.
I’ll be back soon, and we’ll see the world after that.
Except, he never came back. Scaramouche never saw him again. Not even his body, which he assumed met the same fate as everything else that had outlived its usefulness: being burned and discarded like trash.
“... Wrong. That feels wrong,” he finished. Because there was no better word for what happened to the child. It was wrong, through and through.
“You cared,” Kazuha said softly.
A month earlier, he would have disagreed with that, insisting he lacked the ability to care about anything. Caring was a human trait that he could only attempt to imitate. Yet since so many humans evidently lacked the ability to care, maybe the trait wasn’t as human as he once thought.
“Some good that did.” He scoffed. “Anyone whose care actually meant anything did nothing. The child was nothing but another test subject to them.”
Kazuha’s hand moved to hover over his own in a silent request for permission. With a nod, Scaramouche let Kazuha lower it and place it over his own. The warmth and kindness behind it nearly made him shiver.
“Your care meant a lot. To that child, it meant the world.”
In the depths of his mind, he wished it could have meant more. He wished he had run away years before he did, taking the child with him. He wished that he could have realized how wrong the child’s treatment was so much earlier.
How did he not recognize it? Why did he do nothing other than watch the child be taken away, when the nameless child died alone and afraid because of his failure to act? If the researchers were wrong for harming the child, then so was he for allowing it to happen.
What was wrong with him ?
Kazuha squeezed his hand, jolting him out of his thoughts. “Let’s make the child a memorial,” he said. “As a way of honoring his life.”
“There’s nothing left to remember him by,” Scaramouche replied bitterly with a shake of his head.
The researchers made sure of it. The child was just another footnote in their experiment logs, an unsuccessful project not even given a name to call himself. He only met Scaramouche because of a temporary housing arrangement that had placed them in the same unit, and they were only allowed to stay together because Scaramouche’s presence kept the child compliant. And when they had no more use for the child as a tool, when they knew their research had failed, they had the child killed.
That was all Scaramouche knew. The Doctor’s lies shrouded everything else with a dark haze. His attempts to tear through the haze and find the truth were then met with a drastic increase in cruelty, followed by him lashing out, which led to the wretched cycle’s continuation.
“That’s okay,” said Kazuha after a quiet hum. “If there was anything he enjoyed, or wished he could have enjoyed, that would be suitable.”
“He had a doll.”
Scaramouche remembered the child carrying it away with him on that very last day, clutched to his side like a lifeline. He had always likened its appearance to Scaramouche himself, saying that when he brought the cloth toy with him, it felt like Scaramouche was with him too. Scaramouche wondered if the researchers let the child keep the doll during his last moments, or if they had taken it away from him, robbing him of one last thing before they came for his life.
“I don’t have one here. But I have enough spare cloth to make one, if you want to try.” Kazuha smiled encouragingly, although it didn’t fully reach his eyes. “I can show you how to sew.”
All this was completely ridiculous. No amount of honoring the child’s life could undo his fate. Even if souls existed, the child’s would have left this world long ago, at peace or not. Nothing human was eternal. Yet, still, hand in hand with Kazuha, Scaramouche found himself agreeing to this foolishness.
“Okay.”
They finished caring for the yard and fed the cats before going inside to sit at the kitchen table. Kazuha had spread old towels, cloths, and other sources of fabric across the wooden tabletop and was now painstakingly going through the process of sewing two pieces together for Scaramouche to watch.
When he finally handed it off to Scaramouche for him to try, he began his disclaimer. “Just follow exactly what I did. Don’t worry if it comes out wrong the first few times. You’ll get it. It just takes-”
Before Kazuha could finish his sentence, Scaramouche completed a stitch. He then did three more when Kazuha did nothing but stare, which only made Kazuha’s comically wide eyes widen further.
“How did you-?”
“It’s not like this is hard.” Scaramouche completed another stitch of white thread. “This is a children’s craft.”
“But your stitches are already neater than mine…” Kazuha pouted.
Purely to see such an endearing expression on Kazuha’s face again, Scaramouche finished the row without even a glance down at his work. Kazuha mainly stayed on the sidelines watching him after that, only offering the occasional piece of advice about planning how to make the toy. Night had fallen by the time Scaramouche finished even the peach-colored base outline of the doll. Beside him, Kazuha leaned heavily on his own arm, looking about ready to fall asleep sitting up.
“Go to sleep,” Scaramouche told him. “I’ll be done by morning.”
Kazuha, who at that point had fully accepted Scaramouche’s lack of a need to sleep, replied with a hum, leaning over one last time to take a peek at the doll. His hair brushed up against Scaramouche’s shoulder as he did, both due to Kazuha’s proximity and because he had worn it down that day. If Scaramouche turned his head, they’d be nearly forehead to forehead.
Scaramouche continued working, only pausing again when half a minute passed, and Kazuha hadn’t moved. Not only that, but he could feel Kazuha’s eyes on him rather than the doll.
“Whatever you’d like to say, I suggest you say it before you fall asleep on top of me,” he said, shooting a curious glance at Kazuha. He could still feel Kazuha’s breath on his face.
“Nothing,” Kazuha blurted out, a bit too fast. “Just lost in thought.”
Kazuha abruptly stood up, slightly red in the face. He offered a soft ‘goodnight’ before making his swift exit. Scaramouche watched him go, trying and failing for a minute to figure out exactly what any of that was about. Eventually, he chose to let it go with a shrug.
It was likely another one of those human quirks he would never fully understand. Or just another weird Kazuha thing. He had lost track of the list for those a week ago.
He worked on the hand-stitched doll for another few hours until he reached a suitable stopping point. Its pale skin, brown hair, and white robe resembled the nameless child. He’d have to ask Kazuha how to properly sew buttons and a smiling face the next day, but other than that, the doll was nearly complete.
With nothing to busy his hands with, his thoughts escaped his grasp and ran wild again. Except this time, for once, they weren’t all painful, with some instead being bittersweet. Still, they weighed on him, and he eventually found himself sitting outside wearing one of Kazuha’s light jackets. Listening to the lively sounds of the forest and the chilly night time breeze blowing past helped, somewhat.
He reflected on Kazuha’s statement. Parting words that were originally never delivered can be said.
If he had any parting words for the nameless child, what would they be? Words were just words; they couldn’t make up for the loss resulting from a life cut short.
A meow sounded from the distance. Soon enough, the gray and white cat who took it upon itself to always follow Scaramouche joined him where he sat against the wall of the house. Its tail high in the air, it meowed again once it got closer, like it wanted to make sure he saw it.
“I don’t have any food for you,” he said, resting his head on his knees.
The cat only responded with a chirp, weaving itself around his legs. He sighed and reached over to pet it.
“Maybe, I can mention you. Children like animals.”
The nameless child always told stories about the world’s good things, and how he wanted to see them. Telling the child about that would be far more useful than a simple ‘goodbye’ or an empty ‘I’m sorry’. Good things… obviously, he couldn’t just talk about a demanding cat. The more he thought about it, though, the more examples he found. Tea, books, and warm clothes were some, but he couldn’t deny that there was one good thing that overshadowed them all.
“You and your cat friends love Kazuha, don’t you,” Scaramouche said to the cat. It looked up at him and chirped. “You’re lucky he’s a good human.”
Honestly, he could probably summarize everything good about the world by telling the nameless child about Kazuha. Kazuha embodied all that the child believed in, and in turn, all that Scaramouche had lost hope in during the years after the child’s death.
Warmth, kindness, honesty, care—it all existed in the outside world, free for humans to make the choice to give and receive. To have that choice was what it meant to be human, and what it meant to live in the human world.
Scaramouche may not be human. He was far from it in countless ways, both inside and out. But Kazuha made him feel like he could be. That he deserved to be.
“Does he make you feel that way too?” He whispered into the night. A gust of wind nearly swept his quiet words away.
Beside him, the cat stayed silent save for a low purr. It had fallen asleep curled around his feet. Scaramouche shook his head. Of course, it didn’t hear him. It was a cat. Why was he even talking to a cat in the first place? It wasn’t like the creature understood language.
Yet again, that never stopped Kazuha from talking to them. He’d wish them a happy dinner, inform them of approaching rainy weather, and even ask them silly questions, but that was Kazuha. Kazuha did those kinds of things. Scaramouche did not. Or didn’t, up until now.
He sighed, unable to find it in himself to be upset that Kazuha had influenced him. Such things were likely inevitable, anyway, considering they spent almost every day together. Still, he didn’t plan to let Kazuha know that, though. His failed conversation with the cat would remain his little secret, with only the moonlit night sky as a witness.
—
Kazuha went to the city’s edge that morning due to not having any candy at home. He had agreed to pick some up after Scaramouche told him about the nameless child’s fascination with the idea of trying candy, leaving Scaramouche at home to finish the doll. Apparently, small stores near the city’s edge were significantly less busy, and therefore easier on Kazuha’s ears.
It was an hour or two before sunset the next day by the time they had gathered everything for the memorial. After feeding the cats, he and Kazuha went to another open patch of ground near the garden, right beneath a tree that had just recently begun to bloom. They had already cleared the area of twigs earlier in the day, so only a few stray white petals and patches of green grass remained to pattern the ground.
Scaramouche stood beside Kazuha, holding a bundle in his arms containing a few bags of candy, the now completed cloth doll, and a few other small children’s toys Kazuha had found. He placed it on his lap when they knelt down, watching Kazuha lay out some decorative stones. Among those, he also placed down a tiny wood carving of a cat curled around a baby bird that Scaramouche had never noticed before.
“Where'd you find that?” He asked, leaning over to take a better look at the carving.
“I made it.” Kazuha picked it up and held it in his palm for Scaramouche to see. “It might not be much, but I’d also like to pay my respects.”
For some strange reason, Kazuha’s words made his chest tighten with emotion. Kazuha had never met the nameless child. To him, the child was just someone who he heard about from Scaramouche. A faceless, nameless stranger from an entirely different walk of life who died many years ago.
Still, Kazuha cared. He cared enough to take time out of his day and craft a wooden carving in secret. Enough to return to the noisy civilization he disliked on behalf of a child with no connection to him.
Scaramouche took a breath to steady himself before placing the small bags of candy at the tree’s base. Kazuha’s decorative stones framed the colorful bags perfectly, their surfaces shining in the patches of afternoon sunlight that managed to break through the tree’s branches. Then, he placed the toys. A glittery bouncy ball between two stones, Kazuha’s carving next to it, and finally, a package of crayons and a coloring book placed beneath one of the stones to keep it in place.
That left only the doll, staring up at Scaramouche from his lap with its deep green button eyes. He still hadn’t said any parting words. And the longer he stared at the doll, the more words evaded him, slipping away despite his attempts to grasp them.
Early after the child’s death, when he didn’t know the truth, Scaramouche had questioned why the child broke his promise. Hurt eventually faded into resignation that their promise to experience the outside world together was fruitless in the first place. Because the outside world so beautifully described in the child’s dreams wasn’t for something like Scaramouche. Even if the child had survived and lived to see it, Scaramouche wouldn’t have been with him.
Yet, somehow, the opposite had happened. Scaramouche was the one with the privilege of sitting under a flowering tree on a warm spring day, while the child died without ever seeing outside the lab’s dreary, white walls. A right denied to even his remains, which would have been burned to ash in the dark, lonely basement.
It wasn’t fair. Not at all. But it happened, and nothing could undo it.
There are so many good things out there waiting for me, I know it. Candy, hugs, toys… I can’t wait to show you too when we go outside.
A belief in good things that lasted up until the end. Hope that the warmth of those good things would find their way to him, even while trapped in an isolated world defined by its cold indifference. That was the essence of the nameless child’s life.
Holding the doll to his chest, Scaramouche wrapped his arms around it in an embrace. The researchers had denied the child his humanity, not even allowing him the simple gift of a name. They denied him safety, happiness, and eventually, life itself.
But the essence of his life was indestructible. No amount of force could extinguish it. Because the child’s hope was stronger than the researcher’s cruelty. And now, Scaramouche could prove him right.
He laid the doll in the center of the memorial, leaning its tiny body up against the tree. Some white petals scattered by a gust of wind settled beside it as if welcoming it to nature’s peaceful arms, but his vision of them didn’t stay clear for long. It blurred, blending the colors of everything together, and it took Scaramouche a moment to realize the cause.
Tears. Warm tears ran down his face, dripping onto the fabric of his pants below. He had forgotten that he even had the capability to cry, having lost it many years ago.
“Hey.” Beside him, Kazuha spoke in a soft voice. When Scaramouche turned to face him, he could just barely make out Kazuha’s expression through his blurry vision: a comforting smile.
Kazuha slowly moved himself closer and outstretched his arms, stopping right before they could wrap around Scaramouche. For a beat, he waited, and when Scaramouche didn’t pull away, Kazuha hugged him. His hands settled on Scaramouche’s back, rubbing back and forth a few times ever so slightly.
Something about that simple gesture shattered the wall holding back everything Scaramouche tried so hard to lock away. He buried his face in Kazuha’s shoulder and cried, his entire body shaking from the intensity of his emotions. If Kazuha were to let go, he knew he’d simply fall to pieces—broken, sharp-edged pieces that even careful hands would cut themselves on trying to repair—but he knew Kazuha wouldn’t. Because Kazuha had done the impossible.
Kazuha loved him, an artificial puppet, unable to experience love. He felt it in the way Kazuha smiled at him, talked with him, and held him so gently, like he was worth the entire world and more.
The belief he had, the belief that had been forced upon him, was a lie. An awful lie, used to deny him a basic part of existence that all creatures deserved. Used to make him believe that his purpose lied in being used and hurt, because he wasn’t meant for anything else.
He still didn’t know his purpose, becoming aware of the lie hadn’t changed that. He didn’t know what his existence meant for the world as a whole, or what he should choose to do with it. But, held so carefully in gentle arms, surrounded by spring’s warmth and the scents, sounds, and sights of the forest, he did know one thing. He knew it closer and more intimately than he had ever known anything in his entire life.
Kazuha loved him. He loved Kazuha. They loved each other, wholly and unconditionally.
And, for this moment, maybe that was all he needed to know.