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In the dim light, the music box sounds haunting and forlorn. Haruto’s chest rises with a shudder, as if each breath was a battle for the small child. A solitary figure watches over him, her amber eyes distant.
There are times when she thinks she can hear the distant voices of the past welcoming her, calling her to follow them. Return to the parents that she had never had. Run into the warm home that she was certain she must have lived in, long ago. Surely, she must have been someone’s beloved daughter once, right? Wrapped up in fleece blankets, her tender, pink skin flushed from her cries. A calming, cool hand resting on her forehead.
Between her and Gauche, the time before they had been orphaned was never something that they had talked much about. For Droite, there was nothing to talk about in the first place. As far as she can remember, she has always been alone. She doesn’t know why her adopted brother remains tight-lipped about the time before, but she respects his choice. From the glimmer in his eye whenever they brush past the topic, she knows that there are some memories that he would like to forget.
Other than that, what’s hers is his. From the scars they bear from protecting one another to the silly collection of hairpins that Droite has collected, they shared each other’s belongings as they have always had, even in this strange new city. Yet she is beginning to feel something growing within her that she cannot share, no matter how loud and whiny Gauche gets.
“How is he?” asks her brother, appearing from a platform.
Droite jumps and her eyes flicker to the photograph above Haruto’s bed. Kaito. His condition doesn’t seem to have improved or worsened. He’s still the same bandage-covered patient from before.
“He still screams whenever someone tries to speak or touch him. He hasn’t recognized me yet,” murmurs Droite.
Gauche rests a reassuring hand on her shoulder, the strength in his grip easing Droite’s tensed shoulders. Without looking, she can tell that his lips are pulled in a thin line and his brows are furrowed. His caring face.
“You know how he is. He’ll survive the operation.”
“It should have been you,” mutters Droite. “Out of all of us, you’re the strongest.”
A nervous cough. The sound of fingers scratching dry scalp. She’d have to ask for something to ease Gauche’s dry skin. At night, she can hear him scratching like mad.
“Physically, there’s no competition. Mentally…? I’m not sure. There’s something in Kaito’s eyes that makes him look a lot older than either of us,” grunts Gauche.
Droite balls her hand into a fist and squeezes.
“It’s because of Chris that he volunteered,” she says, remembering Kaito’s sharp-faced mentor.
From the beginning, she had disliked his haughty appearance and condescending personality. Only around Kaito did he smile and speak softly. When they had received news that he had suddenly resigned from his position, Droite had breathed a sigh of relief. Only when she had seen Kaito’s haunted expression had her hate been rekindled.
Although she hadn’t considered herself violent, she had dreamed of breaking Chris’ stupidly sharp nose that day. Gauche had picked up on her agitation and added kindling to her anger by promising his own forms of retribution. For once, she had encouraged him. That night in their dorm room, they had vowed various acts of retribution against the man that had abandoned Kaito, from tying him to the ceiling with his hair to pushing him down the garbage processing chute.
Yet the following morning, Kaito had remained despondent.
Although Gauche would never admit it, he had taken Kaito in as one of his siblings. Droite could tell from the way he talked about Kaito out of earshot to whenever they were training together. Along with that, Gauche felt all of his siblings’ pain as his own. The three of them, if not siblings by blood, were siblings by shared pain.
Their training in the underground had made them all equal. No matter if Kaito was from a wealthy family or if Droite and Gauche were penniless orphans, the blood that they had shed flowed down the drain all the same. Atop of the failed trainees, they had survived, their bonds forged from these experiences unbreakable.
Or, Droite hoped were unbreakable.
They considered Kaito one of their own, but did he?
Regardless, his decision to volunteer for Operation Photon Mode had pained both of his older siblings.
Droite still can’t bring herself to look at Kaito for long, limiting her visits to the infirmary for only a few minutes at a time. The pain Kaito must have been in tore at her heart like various needles, small and piercing.
“You’re braver than me, visiting him every day like that,” mutters Gauche, briefly shivering.
Her brother had never liked things associated with hospitals and illness. She suspected that it had something to do with his past.
“It’s sad to see him like this. I can’t help but wonder what will happen if he won’t make it…,” murmurs Droite, her fear finally voiced.
She clutches her chest, imagining the way his body would be disposed of, just like the others had. No ceremony, just a white shroud and a slow march to the incinerator on a gurney.
Nothing to honor him for all of his bravery.
In the dim light, Gauche’s eyes narrow. Between the two of them, he had always been the optimist.
“Don’t say that. Even if he does somehow perish, we’ll take care of his brother for him. That’s what family does,” he says, making a fist.
Standing over Haruto, he looks like a warrior of the night, a blade of darkness made to render nightmares to nothingness in his hands. A small smile fills Droite’s lips as she looks at Gauche’s profile. To think that she had once been taller than him…Now he was the one ruffling her hair and she was the one telling him to stop.
“Kaito keeps on crying out for Haruto but I can’t bear the thought of his brother seeing him like this,” breathes Droite.
“So you’re watching over Haruto while he can’t,” states Gauche.
Droite nods, forcing a smile. She resists from chewing her lips in front of her brother as he had chided her on her recent habit. In a discarded magazine from one of the staffers, it had said that men like women with red lips. As of late, she supposes her lips have become redder, but not enough for Kaito to have noticed before the operation.
“It’s what family does,” she echoes.
“You want him to be more than that though,” continues Gauche in a flat tone.
Droite remains silent, in the way she always had when confirming an ugly truth. She looks at Haruto and then at the various family albums above his bedside, her gaze lingering on the ones with a youthful Kaito. Only in her dreams does he smile like that. She hopes to return that smile to him in the future.
A tired exhale from Gauche follows and then the sound of his scalp being scratched.
Scritch scrit.
“Let me guess. He wakes up to see you by his bedside, and you tell him how you’ve been by his side ever since they permitted visitors. And then his eyes light up and he realizes that you’re someone that he can depend on. Someone he can be weak in front of. How close am I so far?”
Gauche raises a bushy brow, his lips twisted into a slight frown. His arms are crossed and he looks down at his sister. Droite glances at him and inclines her head.
“Go on,” she breathes.
Her brother had always been the one who had told her stories. Even this is a story that she feels herself being drawn to, as embarrassing as it was. To hear her most private thoughts voiced out like this…she can feel heat rising to her cheeks.
“We finish training and you two come closer and closer. You hunt all of the Numbers and Kaito cures Haruto. Then he gets down on one knee and proposes to you with a ring that belonged to his mother, telling you that ‘it’s what she would have wanted.’ He takes you home to his mansion by the sea, where you meet his parents. Immediately, they are drawn to your foreign beauty and excellent way with words,” continues Gauche.
The heat in her face intensifies. True, she had never been good at holding a conversation. It had often made people wary of approaching her. But Kaito would understand, for he was the same as her. He would also make his parents understand, if he had any. She continues to avoid Gauche’s face, too scared to see what her brother would think.
“With his family’s blessings, you two get married. You become Mrs. Kaito Tenjo and start a family with him, growing old together by the sea. And then you die within days of each other, buried side-by-side,” finishes Gauche with a sigh. “Yeah?”
Droite bites her lips. She knew that she shouldn’t dream of such things, yet all of the films and novels she has read makes her want to indulge.
Why couldn’t she be the protagonist of her own story?
In the silence that follows, Gauche sits down beside her, his body thudding against the floor. Droite gives him a venomous glare and motions towards Haruto. She’s answered by a nonchalant shrug. Gauche crosses his legs and places a hand on his chin. He fixes his gaze on her.
She wonders what he sees. Is she still the sodden child he had found beneath a doorway, blanketed in a newspaper? Or has she become a woman in his eyes?
“Don’t hurt yourself,” grunts Gauche after a few moments. “There’s two kinds of people in this world. Ones who know love and ones who haven’t. Kaito’s eyes are more pained than ours because he had known love and lost it. While we…we had nothing to start with.”
Droite balls her hand into a fist. She avoids her brother’s gaze, looking out at the shimmering city lights beneath them.
“Why does that make him different from us?” she mutters, her eyes tearing from the brightness of the lights.
Her brother snorts.
“Look at the way he carries himself. Clearly, someone had cared for him in his past. Someone who had loved him.”
She remembers the first time she had met Kaito. Despite his bedraggled appearance, he held his head high and met everyone’s eyes. For a moment, she had thought that he was a prince.
“My name is Kaito,” he had said in a voice that brought to mind a mountainside stream running across smooth stones.
It was the only comparison Droite could think of, as long-winded and romantic as it sounded. His voice was clean. Pristine, even. She suspected that if she had opened up his chest to peek at his lungs, they would be a vivid pink. He was untouched by the city, from the inside to outside while hers and Gauche’s were speckled with black from breathing in city air their entire lives. A part of Droite had wondered how long Kaito would have survived in the city, like a mountain flower thrown into a muddy street.
“If he’s been hurt before, he won’t let you in as easily,” continues Gauche. “Plus, that’s only one of the many differences between him and us.”
A lump forms in Droite’s throat and she swallows it. She hates when her brother gets this way. Although most had only seen him for his muscle and lack of tact, she had known for a long time that there had always been more than that. In another life, he would have made an excellent philosopher.
“What makes him different from us that the training didn’t take away?” asks Droite with an edge in her tone.
So many things, whispers a voice in her head.
“Blood,” answers Gauche. He hunches over, resting his head against his hand. His gaze grows distant as he follows Droite’s gaze. “He and that Chris guy have a different sort of blood flowing through their veins.”
The sight of Kaito standing over her, unwavering as a trickle of blood slid down his face, fills Droite’s mind.
“We all bleed red,” she hisses, suppressing the urge to snap at Gauche.
Meeting his sister’s agitation with calm, Gauche shakes his head.
“They bleed the red of rubies while we bleed the red of rust,” says Gauche.
There is no blue blood. Only the ruby blood of the aristocrats and the rust-red of commoners, a philosopher’s treatise once said.
On a cold winter night, Gauche had tried to show Droite the intricacies of class differences and their absurdities. It had only made the young Droite frustrated and she had gone to bed with thoughts of jewels dripping from an open wound.
“No matter what happens, they will always have something that we don’t,” mutters Gauche.
“My blood is the same as his!” exclaims Droite.
The sound of Haruto stirring in her sleep makes her cover her mouth. She glares at her older brother, who tries to suppress a smirk.
“But do you have centuries of family history and ancestors to watch over you?” asks Gauche after a few moments.
In the darkness, Droite pulls her hands away from her mouth. She holds Gauche’s solemn gaze for a few moments before she tears her gaze away.
“We were born into this world with nothing but each other to hold ourselves up. Remember that,” murmurs her brother. “If Kaito’s operation goes through, we’ll just be the side characters in his heroes’ tale.”
“I want to give Kaito what we couldn’t have. I want to give him a home,” snaps Droite.
Before she can say anything else that she could regret, she taps her foot on the floor, calling forth the descending platform. In the bright light that came from beneath her, she could see the hurt in Gauche’s expression. As she descends, she can feel her brother’s gaze following her.
“You’re too good for him,” murmurs Gauche.
She wonders about that.
She briskly walks down the halls of the tower, her feet guiding her down a path that she has walked far too often to count. Past the storage rooms. Past the break rooms and labs. The slight smell of antiseptic fills her senses and her pace quickens. Around the corner, the familiar dark green door of the recovery room stares back at her.
Droite stands before the biometric scanner, taking a deep breath. No matter how many times she has gone to see him, it’s always difficult to see Kaito in his current state.
The door slides open and she glides through like a shadow, standing before the bandaged figure in the hospital bed. In the dim light of the room, she can make out Kaito’s fine jawline and slim nose, covered by bandages. His chest rises and falls in a similar manner to Haruto’s, each inhale and exhale a small battle. Unlike last week, they have undone a few of the bandages to allow an oxygen mask. The exposed skin is pink and raw, sending prickles up Droite’s spine.
At least he isn’t screaming.
She sits beside him, basking in the rhythms of the heart monitor and electric buzzing of the lights. From the nurses, she had overheard that they had reinforced his skeleton with steel and his blood with nanobots. Parts had been taken out, “improved” upon and returned. Tear-resistant skin. Sharper eyesight. Fiery blood. Lungs that didn’t require as much oxygen. A body burned and then reconstructed from its ashes.
She wonders if his lungs are still the pristine-pink that she had thought they were when they had first met.
A part of her fears that on the day Kaito wakes up, his eyes will not recognize her or Gauche. He would be something between human and inhuman, an amalgamation of organic material and scientific artifice. She fears that his eyes will be cold and unfeeling, his ability to smile permanently erased. He might as well have been dead, then.
She wouldn’t ever say the words aloud, but she knew that he would be nothing more than a monster if the operation had robbed him of his ability to feel.
Monster .
The worst monsters are not the ones that crawl around in the depths of your mind. They are the ones that wear human skin and smile with pearlescent, immaculate teeth.
Heartland Tower, then, is a den of monsters.
She hopes that Kaito will not join them.
“Are you there…?” whispers Droite.
Kaito’s bandaged form makes no motion.
“Take your time to reclaim yourself from whatever has been done to you…I’ll wait for you. Just please…return as yourself…,” she pleads, her voice barely above a whisper.
She wants to see the kindly Kaito that loves butterflies again. Perhaps he truly bled the blood of rubies to have been able to convince butterflies to land on him. She knows that if she were a butterfly, she would land on him. He was the youth that smelled of freshly cut grass and meadows, even within the confines of a city that bled with sin. He was unsullied and pure, rising above the filth like a lotus from mud.
Surely, he would rise from his operation unsullied as well. Perhaps he would emerge from his bandages more radiant than ever, like a butterfly from its cocoon.
“I’ll hunt Numbers by your side. I promise,” vows Droite.
A soft groan escapes from Kaito. Droite’s hand stops in midair, desperately wanting to hold his hand but remembering what had happened last time. His cries had been heartrending as he cried out in pain, despite his hand refusing to release Droite from its iron grip.
“I’m sorry, I can’t,” breathes Droite.
It had taken two nurses to pry Kaito’s hand from hers. The bruise on her hand had remained for weeks afterwards.
“P...please?” croaks Kaito, his voice cracked with disuse.
“Kaito…?” whispers Droite.
It had been so long since she had heard his voice. To hear it now, cracked with disuse, almost makes her cry out in relief.
“P…lease…,” repeats Kaito.
Although he cannot see her through his bandages, Droite hopes that a hint of light has started to fill his pale blue eyes again. With her hand shaking, she places it in Kaito’s, trying to drown out the memories of his pained screams and iron grip. Slowly, he wraps his fingers around hers. Unlike last time, his grip is firm yet gentle. Through the oxygen mouthpiece, she can see that his pinched lips have relaxed.
“Don’t leave me,” he whispers.
Droite silently nods, blinking back tears of relief. He was still there. In a body that had been burned and sewn back in the name of war, he was still there. As the lights of the hospital begin to dim for the night, the phantom silhouette of their mansion by the sea soon becomes a reality.
🦋
“Shh…I’ll get you some tea and your blankets, alright?” whispers Gauche.
Droite shakes her head, burying her face deeper into Gauche’s chest. Her tears have dyed his shirt with various dark stains and she can hear the reassuring thump thump of his heartbeat like when they were children. She hasn’t cried in front of her brother in ages, yet he had welcomed her tears with the same tender kindness as he had always had.
“Alright…alright…,” grunts Gauche as he reaches for a nearby blanket with one hand.
“He didn’t remember,” chokes Droite. “He doesn’t remember anything during that time.”
A reassuring hand drapes a blanket around the both of them, followed by tender pats.
“I told you. You’re too good for him.”
A sob escapes from Droite, muffled by Gauche’s chest.
“Who will he come home to? He’s out there alone, with no one to love and protect him…,” laments Droite.
Gauche tightens his jaw.
“Now, you know that isn’t true…,” he begins. “He has Haruto and you have me.”
He’s answered by a hiccough and he lets out a hefty sigh.
“I told you. To him, we’re only side characters in his hero's story. How about, once this Duel Carnival thing blows over, we bust out of here and become our own heroes? I’ve saved enough for both of us. We can get tickets outta here,” proposes Gauche.
Droite pauses and looks up at him, dark circles of smeared eyeliner and eyeshadow rimming her eyes. Although a part of Gauche wants to laugh, another part of him wonders when his little sister, who had almost never cared about her appearance, had started to wear makeup.
“Really…?” she chokes. “Why…?”
A weary smile fills Gauche’s features and he brushes a tear away from Droite’s eye.
“I think we’ve already paid our due to Heartland. It’s about time for us to go for greener pastures.”
“But Kaito…”
“Will always have a place with us, as long as he lives," insists Gauche.
“His body is deteriorating from that damn operation,” protests Droite. “We can’t just abandon him.”
“Once all the numbers are collected, he’ll get the rest he deserves and heal. Besides, Heartland wouldn’t let his best hunter die like that.”
A pause follows as Gauche pulls Droite into a bear-hug, resting his head on hers. He wonders when he had started outgrowing her and they couldn’t borrow each other’s clothes anymore. It must have been a long time ago, now that he thinks of it. Time is passing him by before he notices, a sign that he is growing old.
He softly chuckles. He doesn’t even know how old they actually are, but they had agreed to put down “19” on their duelist records.
“People like him will have countless resources at their disposal to keep themselves alive. But the moment we find ourselves accidentally sliced in two or in the way of a truck, they’ll let us die on the streets. Easy come, easy go, right? That’s why I want us to get out of here,” whispers Gauche. “I want to see the both of us free and safe before it’s too late.”
Droite remains silent and he slowly walks her over to the sofa, gingerly sitting her down. He wraps the blanket around her shoulders, giving them a reassuring pat.
“I couldn’t live without you, y’know? I’d probably lose my head!” he says with a grin.
His sister doesn’t smile and pulls the blanket closer to herself.
“How about some of that tea we stole from the Tenjos’ Christmas presents?” offers Gauche.
“Plain please,” murmurs Droite.
Like the way Kaito has his. Gauche stops himself from frowning.
“You sure…? It’s pretty strong without anything…,” says Gauche mildly.
A pause. Droite worries her lip.
“Two spoonfuls of honey then,” she amends.
“No problem. I think I’ll have some myself. Do you want to put something on the TV?”
Droite glances at the beaten form of the antique TV Gauche had fished out of a dumpster. Despite its age, it continued to stubbornly work as if in defiance of the world that decided to throw it out.
“‘Morpho Suite?’” murmurs Droite.
Gauche lets out a long-suffering groan, rolling his eyes to the back of his skull and sticking his tongue out. He sees the ghost of a smile tugging at Droite’s lips.
“Really? A sappy romance right after your own Butterfly Prince flutters away? Do you want to cry even more?”
Droite smirks. They both know the truth. No matter how many times they watch the film, Gauche always makes it to the credits in a sobbing heap. The kindly Butterfly Prince parts ways with his mortal lover with the promise of returning by next summer, yet when he returns, a thousand years have already passed. In the wasteland of the former meadow, a single butterfly lands on his finger and then flutters away into the sky, leaving behind the forlorn prince.
“The songs are uplifting,” replies Droite.
“The ending sure isn’t!” retorts Gauche as he walks to the tiny counter that serves as their kitchen.
A moment of silence follows as Droite lies down. She lets out a sigh.
“I suppose that you were right. People like Kaito are the long-lived butterflyfolk while we’re just the clumsy mortals that they pass by. Yet their appearance in our lives makes us change.”
Her brother grunts.
“A blink to them is a lifetime for us,” he mutters. “But don’t you think, with all that time, they get bored?”
Droite can see another version of her brother, dressed in a sharp suit and debating on a stage, one hand stroking his chin. The kettle whistles and she is returned to their darkened quarters.
“Think of time as a jewel. A single jewel is priceless. A mountain of them is as good as the garbage that passes through this city. When they don’t have to fight for survival—base survival like shelter, food, and safety—they grow complacent. And complacency—YOWCH!”
The sound of Gauche sucking on his fingers and swearing under his breath quickly dispels any of Droite’s visions of her brother as a philosophy professor.
“You alright?” she murmurs, stifling a smile.
“Nothing bad, yeah,” grunts Gauche. “Anyways, where was I?”
“Complacency,” replies Droite.
“Right, right. Pop the disc into the player would you? Anyways…complacency leads to boredom. They become as fat as caterpillars on their complacency and boredom. They’re not alive. We are. That’s why I’m proud to have rust in my blood…”
Droite softly chuckles to herself and pops in the disc from their small collection of films. She doesn’t think that it’s blood or class that separates her from Kaito. It’s the fact that their hearts have always been headed towards different directions. Kaito wants to continue to fight, unable to see the end of his personal war. Droite wants the opposite. A life where she can finally lay down the arms she has been holding for as long as she could remember and settle down. She wants to protect someone while sharing a piece of her heart and receive the same affection in return.
With Kaito, that wouldn’t be possible, not in the near future. They both needed time to grow and heal.
And maybe then…
She doesn’t think her dreams of the beachside manor will ever fade. Instead, it will remain in her heart like an embedded jewel, glimmering in the darkness and guiding her.
Even if she would never arrive at that manor, it was nice to have a place in her mind that would always be lit by the gentle lights of an innocent dream.